Apr 9, 2002 : MLB Expands Contract With Digital River

📅 April 9, 2002 - E-commerce outsourcing provider Digital River (digitalriver.com) announced on Tuesday that MLB Advanced Media LP (MLBAP), the interactive media and Internet company of Major League Baseball (mlb.com), has chosen to extend its e-commerce agreement with Digital River.

Under the terms of the new agreement, says the company, Digital River will provide MLBAM with an enhanced service offering, including profit fulfillment, customer service call center capabilities and extensive e-marketing services.
Formed in June of 2000, after a unanimous vote of MLB club owners to centralize all of Major League Baseball's Internet operations, MLB Advanced Media LP manages the league's official site as well as each of the 30 individual club sites.
?Since we first signed with Digital River over a year ago, the company has been able to meet and exceed our expectations as an e-commerce provider. As a result of our successful partnership, we chose to expand the contract to utilize even more of Digital River's capabilities,'' says Noah Garden, senior vice president of e-commerce for MLBAM. ?We are looking forward to expanding our relationship with them so shopping at MLB.com remains a positive experience for baseball fans worldwide.?
``We are excited about the opportunity to extend our relationship with MLBAM and provide them with an expanded service offering,'' said Joel Ronning, Digital River's CEO. ``MLBAM has been using our e-marketing services on its e-commerce site for over a year and has seen some quarter-over-quarter revenues increase as much as 200 percent by coordinating online and offline marketing campaigns. This year, we plan to help MLBAM implement a wider variety of our e-marketing tactics to aggressively grow the site's sales. We are providing not only the infrastructure and functionality to support MLBAM's technology requirements, but also the customer service support and product fulfillment to help increase customer satisfaction.''
?We are excited about the opportunity to extend our relationship with MLBAM and provide them with an expanded service offering,? says Joel Ronning, Digital River's CEO. ?MLBAM has been using our e-marketing services on its e-commerce site for over a year and has seen some quarter-over-quarter revenues increase as much as 200 percent by coordinating online and offline marketing campaigns. This year, we plan to help MLBAM implement a wider variety of our e-marketing tactics to aggressively grow the site's sales. We are providing not only the infrastructure and functionality to support MLBAM's technology requirements, but also the customer service support and product fulfillment to help increase customer satisfaction.?
Digital River says it previously built the shop.mlb.com site, as well as e-commerce stores for each of 30 club sites. Hosted and managed by Digital River, the stores offer more than 15,000 MLB product SKUs, including clothing such as jerseys and hats from every team, as well as authenticated memorabilia and novelty items. Digital River says that in 2002, it will also handle the transaction management for the site's auction section.