Fox Sports to Launch Online Baseball Game

Fox Sports Networks this week will launch a subscription fee-based online baseball game that will incorporate real-life game statistics, such as average pitch speeds and batting averages of individual players.

The game, developed by Wild Tangent in Redmond, Wash., and available on the company’s FoxSports.com Web site, will cost $9.95 a month or $19.95 for the 2002 season. Subscribers can compete in a tournament. Winners are based on real-world performance of the baseball teams and how well subscribers do in the computer game, called “Hit the Pros.”

The game is one of many burgeoning efforts to make money from Internet-based games, most of which currently are available for free and supported by shrinking advertising dollars.

Revenues from online games are relatively small--just $300 million this year compared with more than $10 billion for the overall U.S. video game market, according to IDC, a market research firm.

Alex Pham