Skydeck Lessons from Major League Baseball's Game-Changing Innovations
Mar 18, 2026
Chris Marinak, former MLB operations and strategy chief and HBS alumnus, led innovations like instant replay, streaming platforms, and rule tweaks. He discusses designing data-driven systems, shortening games to boost engagement, building an independent tech incubator, and experiments from robot umps to streaming deals. The conversation highlights culture, testing, and business impacts of sports innovation.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Three True Outcomes Reduced Baseball's Action
- Baseball shifted toward the three true outcomes (home runs, strikeouts, walks), reducing on-field action fans value.
- Chris Marinak explains Statcast-driven optimization increased velocity and homers, prompting rule experiments to restore stolen bases and balls in play.
Measure Engagement With Time Between Balls In Play
- Use time between balls in play as a KPI to measure game engagement rather than just total game length.
- Marinak cites that the metric nearly doubled over a decade and dropping it correlates with visibly higher fan attention.
MLB Built A Billion Dollar Streaming Business Internally
- MLB created MLB Advanced Media by isolating a startup-like team away from the main office to build digital products.
- That team built streaming tech used by HBO and Disney, later sold to Disney for multiple billions.