The subsidiary responsible for operating the Web sites of 30 baseball teams has to know where its viewers are before hooking them up with video of the games. If it can't the broadcasters that bring in much of the League's revenue will want to know why its

Major League Baseball faces the kind of channel conflict a lot of businesses would love to have.

More than 800,000 fans are willing to buy subscriptions to watch MLB games online. That business is worth more than $100 million to MLB. But if MLB takes those fans away from the broadcasters that pay it hundreds of millions of dollars for the right to carry the games, it's out of business.

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Major League Baseball Advanced Media, the MLB subsidiary responsible for delivering live audio and video streaming of professional baseball games to subscribers logging on to MLB.com, has been dancing on that edge, and pretty successfully too.

See below for the specifics as well as Baseline's analysis of the economics of baseball Webcasts, and just how valuable a sports fanatic can be.

Then read more about how IT fueled the Red Sox's drive to a World Series championship. Finally, check out other stories from Baseline and in eWEEK.com's Special Report on IT in Sports to see how sports organizations are bridging the worlds of entertainment and technology not only to make money, but to make their customers happy as well.

Story Guide:

The Struggle to Reach Fans

Finding Out Who Is Out There? And Where Are They?

Little Room For Error

Stats: What Is MLB Advanced Media