While Microsoft has worked its way to NFL sidelines, Apple has managed to strike its own home run with Major League Baseball, this season, with a multi-year partnership to supply MLB with custom versions of Apple’s 12.9 inch iPad Pro, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
Baseball coaches are expected to get access to the new tablets as of this coming season, and each iPad Pro will feature personalized team logos, and rugged cases, as well as a custom app designed specifically for coaches and staff, to assess more real-time data on the field.
The deal between the MLB and Apple is almost historic, as it occurred almost simultaneously as the lifting of the ban on using electronic devices in dugouts.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has gone on record telling the WSJ that “...the single biggest change has been the emergence and predominance of analytics...”, and further elaborated about analytics as factors that affect the way staff judge the players, as well as how fans enjoy the game.
The amount of information coaches will have access to will be far more than what they were able to work with before, especially since iPad Pros will enable them to review videos of gameplay on the field, while previously, they could only get access to that data off the field.
The custom app created for players and coaches is called MLB Dugout, created by Advanced Media, an MLB company based in New York.
Also according to the WSJ, the data available on each iPad will be relevant to each team, instead of being drawn from a collective database of all teams. This helps making the data more useful, when devising strategies during a game. Future plans will likely enable teams to access real-time data as well.
Manfred commented on the introduction of the iPad Pro in MLB games, with hopes that the device will “...speed up the game, if even a little bit...”, to make baseball as popular with the next generation as it has with the current and previous one.
The logic is sound, as new generations of baseball fans expect a similar experience as NFL fans, and in a way the long standing ban on electronic devices on the field has, at least in part, hurt the popularity of the game, which is something that Apple is looking to change.