Good hour for sports here at OWV. Having just hung up the phone with the NHL’s Director of Corporate Communications, I received a press release announcing that MLB has signed a deal with Yahoo! to make their MLB.TV package available to Yahoo!Sports users.

“Partnering with MLB.com allows Yahoo! to offer our users an unmatched baseball experience, and also presents our advertisers with a new opportunity to reach a large, engaged audience of baseball enthusiasts,” said Todd Teresi, senior vice president of the Yahoo! Publisher Channel, in the statement.

MLB.TV Premium subscribers are offered an enhanced video player with a television-quality picture through MLB.TV NexDef(TM) at either 800k or 1.2MB. Since Cablevision doesn’t offer their MLB Extra Innings package in High-Def, I’ve been watching the 1.2MB stream for the past week on my TV and it looks pretty good. While it doesn’t compete with the high-def sports content available, it is quite a bit cheaper than the same offering via cable.

Ok, back to hockey. OVW will be chatting with the broadband folks at the NHL next week about their new player, their broadband initiatives, and their web only programming like The Hockey Show, which brings the hardest of hard core fans every last bit of information, like what Sydney Crosby had for breakfast, direct to their desktops.

Staci Kramer has a writeup of the NHL’s new player, original content and ad sales strategy. The NHL has been far more open with its content than other pro sports league, and they have needed to be since they have had a lot harder time getting their content on TV.

The addition of original content and improved sponsorship options signals the NHL’s focus on increasing revenue through ad-supported as opposed to subscription means. NeuLion which manages the NHL’s broadband initiative has historically focused on selling and delivering content to custom set-top boxes on a subscription basis, something they have not done so far for the NHL.