As of Feb. 16, fans of baseball and hockey will be able to purchase online access to MLB and NHL games in one shot.

Whereas $109.95 will buy you a full season of MLB.tv and $79.95 will purchase the NHL’s Race for the Cup programming package, those who would like both will be able to bundle them for $139.95.

Obviously, this is a nice offering for any fans who would like access to online broadcasts from both leagues. Even for those of us who won’t be purchasing it, though, the package is an interesting new partnership between completely separate sports entities.

If this bundling proves popular, could it lead to more joint packaging by leagues both online and on TV? The NHL and NBA each start their seasons while the NFL is playing. Football season begins about a month before MLB is done. Players arrive in Florida and Arizona for spring training about halfway through basketball and hockey schedules and right about the same time that NASCAR season opens.

Even an entity like Major League Soccer could see an opportunity to tag along with the stronger following of another sport.

For fantasy players and writers, it would certainly be nice to get a discount by combining a couple of programming packages they would normally purchase anyway.

We’ll see what comes of this partnership.

Tags: baseball, hockey, mlb, mlb.tv, nhl, race for the cup, webcast

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 2:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. 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.