Bloomberg Competing with Yahoo and ESPN

Bloomberg is actually in business with baseball. It has licensed M.L.B.’s statistics; pitch location and velocity data; and video to create the team software and fantasy products for fans that will roll out in February. For the past year or so, it has been soliciting the opinions of team executives and players about the team software.

Seeking a return beyond baseball, Bloomberg is expanding into developing software for teams and leagues around the world.

The challenge for Bloomberg is to create software that is better, faster and more visually useful than what rivals offer to help develop players and predict their performances. A demonstration of Bloomberg’s software showed dazzlingly colorful graphics and an easy way to plot statistics and compare players in complex combinations.

The developers say that after studying rival software makers, they can do more and do it better.