Baseball fans might have been especially excited to ring in the new year, because Jan. 1 meant the debut of the MLB Network.

Major League Baseball becomes the last of the traditional four “major” American professional sports to launch its own television outlet, but the timing of the debut has reportedly helped it to garner the largest initial audience in the history of cable television.

It is not, however, setting any trends in fantasy sports coverage. We already knew that the opening schedule for the network would include no fantasy-specific programming, so the words of president and CEO Tony Pettiti only that it wasn’t a mere oversight.

Here’s what Pettiti had to say in an interview with BizofBaseball.com:

Bizball: Fantasy baseball is a popular pastime for many fans of MLB. Has there been any consideration to adding any content that may approach the fantasy baseball at any level?

Petitti: There’s two ways to look at that. First, in terms of specific shows prior to the season that will air before people draft their teams and get involved with that. We’re definitely going to do something there. The second piece is that I look at it almost as you are providing information in somewhat of a passive way. All baseball fans care about numbers, it’s just part of a way the game is watched and understood. It’s the way it’s measured in a lot of ways. So numbers are important to all kinds of fans, whether you play fantasy or not. Our show, MLB Tonight, is going to be able to put a lot of those numbers into context. We will have a lot of times stuff like league leaders, and who’s done and what trends there are. So the way I look at it, you’ll get that information and if you care about fantasy that will be important to you and you’ll realize you’re getting it. On top of that, whether you play fantasy or not you’ll still get it. It’s sort of done to include all views of the game. And then from there we’ll see if we need specific segments on fantasy within the course of an MLB Tonight show. I think that our show will provide so much in-depth information that fantasy players will realize and will see that their information is coming.

It’s certainly true that we fantasy players gather pertinent information from wrap-up and analysis shows, but Pettiti and others should pay attention to the growth trend among fantasy players and make an aggressive — not passive, as he says — play for what already is a strong market.

The lack of fantasy-specific programming shouldn’t really be surprising. Football is by far the leader in the fantasy marketplace, yet the still-new and growing NFL Network provides no fantasy-centered shows. It does at least present appearances by NFL.com’s fantasy face Michael Fabiano, however, to carry over the league’s online fantasy presence to its broadcast outlet.

MLB.com features a fantasy homepage, and MLB Radio carries a daily show, Fantasy 411, through the season. Judging by Pettiti’s comments, there doesn’t even seem to be a plan for intersection between those offerings and MLB Network.

In my admittedly biased opinion, it seems almost irresponsible to launch a 24-hour sports network in 2009 without specifically directing at least a small portion of your programming at the active, multiplying and wallet-wielding fantasy consumer. MLB Network has the opportunity take the lead in this area, but it doesn’t even appear ready to take its cuts.

Tags: baseball, biz of baseball, fantasy 411, fantasy baseball, michael fabiano, mlb, mlb network, mlb radio, mlb tonight, mlb.com, nfl network, nfl.com, tony pettiti

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 1st, 2009 at 9:10 pm and is filed under Lead Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.