NEW YORK - During the keynote address at the Apps for Brands event, the CEO of MLB.com said that WAP is running the game in terms of reach, but applications are better for generating revenue.

MLB.com runs SMS alerts and has a mobile Web site, as well as mobile applications for various platforms. The company streams full-length live games through its MLB.com At Bat 2009 application for iPhone and iPod touch that combines pay-per-download and pay-per-view monetization models.

?Our mandate was to put the game of baseball on every device we could with a plug or a battery, from PCs to mobile phones,? said Robert Bowman, president/CEO of Major League Baseball Advanced Media, New York. ?If you think you can get by with just a WAP site, you?re mistaken.

?In the wireless world, there are 80,000 apps, which is still a small number,? he said. ?Will it be a million apps? You bet, but it?s still a lot better odds than you face in the WAP world.?

Major League Baseball Advanced Media operates MLB.com, the official Web site of Major League Baseball.

The MLB.com At Bat application can be downloaded in the App Store for $9.99 and users can then stream complete MLB games to their iPhone for $0.99 each (see story).

MLB?s iPhone portfolio also includes the GameDay, LiveAudio and LiveVideo applications.

The brand's applications have been downloaded more than a million times and 400,000 of the downloads are for paid applications.

?Whereas with subscription products on other channels people might use it once or twice a week, our mobile app consumers use it every day, which is staggering,? Mr. Bowman said. ?We?ve seen phenomenal usage levels and it?s because you have the phone with you all the time.

?It stays next to you at your bedside table and it?s the first thing you look at in the morning when you wake up,? he said

MLB.com has an application for the Palm Pre (see story). The company began ramping up its mobile strategy last year (see story).

Brands such as Sharp have partnered with MLB.com to run mobile marketing initiatives (see story).

However, MLB does not plan to rely exclusively on ad support to monetize its mobile properties.

?As publishers we?re here to make money and I don?t know who in ?94 or ?95 thought that the Internet should be free,? Mr. Bowman said. ?There are incredibly smart media people trying to make money out of incredibly valuable content online and struggling to do so.

?I hope there isn?t a headlong rush in the wireless space of people saying let?s give this away for free and make it up with advertising, because there are not enough advertisers spending money,? he said.

?Once you get consumers used to free content you can?t put the genie back in the bottle.?

Many predicted that cable television was going to be the death of baseball. Later, it became the first sport to put all games on TV, and was ridiculed at the time.

In 1999, Bud Selig, the commissioner of MLB, thought that digital media for live sports was the future, and invested in digital media. Now MLB streams full games online via MLB.tv and sells that as a subscription service.

Now, that digital coverage has moved onto mobile devices.

?The real-time delivery of information is key, particularly for a stat-focused sport like baseball,? Mr. Bowman said. ?I hope mobile content moves towards a subscription model for premium content.

?Charging for entry into a WAP site is impossible, but you can charge for an app because it looks better and the usability is better,? he said. ?Once you have the reach we can do what cable does, what we all aspire to, which is sell advertising on top of the subscription product.?

MLB.com?s WAP site today gets 25 million page views daily, which includes 4 million unique visitors.

?WAP is so far ahead of applications in terms of reach, but you make more money with an application, so that?s why you have to do both,? Mr. Bowman said. ?The partners we have are phenomenal, including Apple, AT&T, Adobe, Palm and we?re going to other platforms like Android.

?We have strong relationships with telcos and handset manufacturers, and our mobile strategy has been very different from how we approached the wired Web,? he said.

?Getting content to people in a way that they enjoy and are willing to pay for is a challenge and you need all of the parts of the ecosystem partnering to help make it happen.?

Mr. Bowman said that the speed at which the mobile space is evolving is head-spinning and that companies have to keep moving forward and innovating because competitors pay attention to what the leaders in the mobile ecosystem are doing.

?It?s a humbling experience to be in the mobile space, because you?re competing for eyeballs, time and wallet with a lot of big, experienced companies, and sometimes you win and sometimes you don?t,? Mr. Bowman said. ?In mobile you compete with everyone who?s trying to steal your customers and some of them do a pretty darn good job of it.

?Just when you think you might be a step ahead, the mother ship ESPN launches a million apps,? he said. ?I hate ?em sometimes because they beat your brains into a bloody pulp, but I also love ?em because they?re great partners of ours.?

So what has MLB.com learned? What are the secrets to a successful mobile application?

?Great content matters?it matters how you present your content, what it looks like and how easy it is to use,? Mr. Bowman said. ?How you get your app discovered is very important and it?s hard even if you?re Major League Baseball.

?We?re trying to get people to use our apps, not ESPN?s apps, and it?s not enough just to say ?We?re baseball,?? he said. ?The notion of a one-minute delay is unacceptable, it has to be now, because people want to be the first to know, they want to see it on their phone before they hear about it on TV.

?Another important piece is providing ease of payment, and iTunes plays a key role, but it?s important for billing systems to be user-friendly because it?s a pain in the butt for a lot of people to type on their phones.?