Major League Baseball Expands Use of Apple's Passbook

Erica Ogg, writing for GigaOM.com. notes:

For the 2013 baseball season, Major League Baseball is more than tripling the number of stadiums that will accept mobile tickets via Apple’s Passbook app. This year there will be 13 stadiums that will enable paperless ticketing via Passbook, MLB announced at a fan event in New York City Tuesday night. That’s up from four last season.

It is notable that MLB was an early adopter of Passbook, which launched as part of Apple's iOS 6 update last year. Passbook's quick access to ticketing information when geographically relevant (i.e. at the ballpark) makes it an excellent fit for creating a better live experience for baseball fans.

The rest of the article talks about how MLB is enhancing its "At Bat" app for iOS and Android to provide better engagement with the fans. This part of the article has two interesting data points regarding the free version of At Bat and the paid version (via subscription) of At Bat. For the free version, iOS users are 70% of the audience (though it is noted that the Android user base is growing). With regard to the paid subscription version, iOS users account for 85% of the user base. Interesting stats about the difference between iOS and Android users of the app.

Sadly, my beloved Seattle Mariners were not part of the Passbook announcement (though some hope remains since it is mentioned in the article that a few teams aren't ready to make an announcement just yet).​