The Major League Baseball cooperative that runs MLB.com has become the latest pro sport online video site to be hit with a class action lawsuit under a federal privacy law, which accuses MLB.com and other properties operated by MLB Advanced Media of wrongly sharing information with Facebook about the video viewing habits of American subscribers.
On Oct. 21, attorneys with the firms of Stephan Zouras, of Chicago, and Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane Conway & Wise, of Chicago, filed suit in Chicago federal court against MLB Advanced Media.
The attorneys filed suit on behalf of named plaintiff James Hayes, identified as an Illinois resident who has used MLB.com since 2017 and has subscribed to the service.
MLB Advanced Media is a partnership of the owners of all MLB teams. It operates the MLB.com property, which provides users with access to tickets, as well as news, real-time in-game updates, statistics, schedules and other information, as well as radio and television broadcasts and highlights for most games.
MLB Advanced Media also employs a network of reporters to bring subscribers information about the teams. The cooperative also runs the official sites for Minor League Baseball and the websites for the television networks for the New York Mets and New York Yankees.
As recently as 2012, MLB Advanced Media brought in more than $600 million per year, according to a report published by Fast Company.
The lawsuit seeks to expand the action to include potentially millions of others who hold subscriptions or have accessed video content on MLB.com or other properties operated by MLB Advanced Media.
The lawsuit is essentially similar to others filed against other online entertainment providers. Last month, for instance, lawyers from the Peiffer Wolf firm also filed similar class actions against the NFL, Warner Bros. and Buzzfeed.
Just as with those other lawsuits, the class action against MLB Advanced Media asserts the company shared user content viewing history and habits with social media company Meta, through its primary platform, Facebook.
The complaint asserts MLB.com, just as the other sites targeted by the class actions, allows Facebook to track people’s viewing habits using its so-called Tracking Pixel. The complaint asserts the tracking data provided to Facebook allows the social media company to track users using their specific Facebook identifier.
Facebook then allegedly uses that information to allegedly round out its collection of personalized data it holds on individual Facebook account holders, without their knowledge or expressed consent.
The lawsuit asserts the user tracking and data sharing violate the federal Video Privacy Protection Act, which allegedly forbids video service providers, like MLB.com, from sharing customers’ viewing history and habits with Facebook or others, without consent.
As with the other lawsuits, Facebook and Meta are not named as defendants.
The lawsuit seeks damages of $2,500 per user, plus unspecified punitive damages and attorney fees.
Attorneys representing Hayes and other plaintiffs in the action against MLB Advanced Media include Ryan F. Stephan and James B. Zouras, of the firm of Stephan Zouras, and Brandon M. Wise, of the Peiffer Wolf firm.