Baseball TV network eyes home-run debut

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By Ben Klayman

CHICAGO, Dec 30 (Reuters) - The economy may be throwing a curveball at U.S. advertisers, but Major League Baseball is betting its new cable television channel will score big with viewers after an expected record-breaking debut on Thursday.

MLB Network will begin airing in more than 50 million homes at 6 p.m. EST, the largest cable TV introduction by about 20 million homes. While the landscape is littered with such rivals as Walt Disney Co's (DIS.N) ESPN and the National Football League's NFL Network, MLB Network Chief Executive Tony Petitti expects his channel to get its share of the pie.

"You're always trying to figure out what your share of the marketplace is going to be and if you're new in, you're trying to figure out where your share is going to come from," he said in a telephone interview. "We feel comfortable that the product we're going to offer will allow us to get the share of the business that we need."

Given the soft ad market and start-up costs, the baseball network will likely finish about break-even in its first year, said an official familiar with the launch who asked not to be identified. After that, however, it should generate tens of millions of dollars in free cash flow annually.

"It's a rough economy and getting people to step up right now is hard. The timing of the launch is not great," said Michael Law, a vice president and group director at Carat, a media buying and planning division of advertising company Aegis Group Plc. (AEGS.L)

"At the end of the day, sports is going to take its lumps like everyone else," added Law, who nonetheless said the network is generating great interest among advertisers. Baseball has not stinted on its investments in the 24-hour network, spending more than $50 million to launch an asset that could eventually be worth $1 billion, according to a report in Street & Smith's SportsBusiness Journal citing industry sources.