VentureBeat

Baseball, while still America’s past time, is no longer its most popular sport. (That would be NFL football.) So it makes sense that the keepers of the game attempt to branch out as fully as possible to lure in new fans and inspire excitement in young people about playing the game again. As such, Major League Baseball (MLB) and ESPN have reached an agreement to put the game on multiple digital platforms, according to USA Today.

This move will allow for baseball games to show up on services like Xbox Live, which uses the Xbox 360 gaming console to get content from over the Internet to your television, and be placed on device such as the iPod. Why the MLB would need ESPN to do this is unclear, but the cable television network has a stranglehold on most things sports, so I’m sure it gave baseball a sweet deal. (Terms were not disclosed.)

ESPN previously had a lesser digital rights deal with MLB, but opted out back in December, paidContent notes. The MLB also had troubles earlier this year with live video casts of its games on MLB.TV, so perhaps that plays into this equation.

As part of the deal, ESPN will also get to put MLB games on its ESPN360.com site, as well as its ESPN Mobile TV channel. Perhaps most importantly though, it retains the rights for all Sunday Night Baseball, Monday Night Baseball and Wednesday Night Baseball shows on the main ESPN television channel. Also, in a first, certain games will be streamed over the Internet live.

I’m a huge sports fan, but I personally cannot stand the amount of advertisements on ESPN.com’s main web site. Here’s to hoping that ad-laden experience doesn’t translate to all of these new platforms — but I have a feeling it will.

This deal runs through 2013.

The world’s largest sports website, ESPN.com, is walking away from advertising networks, opting instead to sell ads directly. After recently leaving Specific Media, the site has turned down offers from other ad networks according to Mediaweek. This is the latest, and perhaps most significant story in a series of anti-ad network sentiment that has been traversing the Internet lately.

The key issue here is that ESPN.com feels it can sell the ad inventory on its site without having to give a commission back to the ad networks. Being a massive site with a highly coveted demographic, they are likely right. The question is, if ESPN.com is successful in going it alone, will other sites follow suit?

Ad networks function by utilizing a large network of advertisers to sell ad space on sites. This allows the site to focus on creating content while the ad network manages much of the business. However, with larger sites now able to hire their own sales teams, ad networks roles in those sites are decreasing.

While reporting that ad network Federated Media (which VentureBeat utilizes) was nearing a $30 million round of funding last week, we asked how it could maintain its base of publishers while taking a 40 percent revenue cut. Upon seeing this ESPN.com news, some of the larger publishers may be asking themselves the same thing.

This discussion is not entirely dissimilar from the one currently going on in the music industry. Quite a few notable artists including Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have experimented with selling their music directly to fans, bypassing the labels. Such a move allows the bands to make a higher return off of sales — the same outcome ESPN.com is likely to see by walking away from ad networks.

Current online ad networks are also under attack from larger entrants in the arena. Yesterday, Forbes unveiled plans to launch its own ad network for up to 400 financial blogs. Google, also recently started testing out a new service called Ad Manager, a new advertising service that will allow users to take care of their own ad sales and fill in the rest with AdSense ads (our coverage).

Federated Media’s founder John Battelle is very aware of the problems current ad networks are facing. By focusing too much on building impressive platforms rather than addressing the core need of advertising that engages, “ad networks have become the problem,” Battelle notes. He lays out more thoughts in a Q&A with CNET.