Major League Baseball Advanced Media Selects Digital Island for Web Site Hosting and Content Delivery

Business Wire, July 2, 2001

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 2, 2001

Digital Island Services Improve Performance and Reliability

for MLB.com's One Million Daily Visitors

Major League Baseball Advanced Media LP (MLBAM), the interactive media and Internet company of Major League Baseball, has selected Digital Island (Nasdaq:ISLD) to provide managed hosting and content delivery services for www.mlb.com, the official league Web site. MLBAM, which manages the MLB.com Web site and each of the 30 individual club sites, chose Digital Island's Internet infrastructure services to help ensure a fast, reliable and secure online experience for the one million sports fans that visit the baseball portal daily.

Using Digital Island's PrivateHost managed hosting service and Footprint(R) content delivery network, MLBAM is able to provide sports fans with the most efficient Web site containing comprehensive baseball information. The added reliability and performance enables MLB.com to provide faster, guaranteed delivery of content.

The site features news headlines, pitch-by-pitch enactment of games, live scores, information on player injuries, transactions and fantasy games. The site also offers enhanced search capabilities of team and player statistics so fans can select and compare statistics on different players and find out information such as Alex Rodriguez's batting average against left-handed pitchers on grass -- Answer: .382.

"Digital Island's hosting and content delivery services provide us with a robust and secure environment that is required to operate a reliable and profitable Web site in the highly-competitive online sports arena," said Bob Bowman, president and chief executive officer of MLBAM. "Baseball fans depend on MLB.com to obtain information about their favorite teams and Digital Island is helping us deliver and manage a tremendous amount of content critical to making that happen."

"Digital Island is excited to be part of baseball history, providing MLBAM with a scalable and reliable outsourced solution to help provide an excellent end user experience and drive online revenue for one of the most exciting e-business sports sites on the Web," said Ruann Ernst, chairman and chief executive officer, Digital Island. "MLB made the right decision by selecting Digital Island's infrastructure to manage their content and support the surging volume of fan traffic and transactions on MLB.com."

MLBAM stores content and applications in Digital Island's secure data centers that are maintained 24X7 and contain back-up and disaster recovery systems to ensure the safety and availability of content. When baseball fans request pages from MLB.com, Digital Island's Footprint content delivery service speeds up the download by storing content closer to the users in servers at the edge of the network. Web queries are seamlessly directed to the optimal performing server nearby through Digital Island's patented Best Distributor Selection (BDS) technology.

About MLB Advanced Media, LP

Established in June 2000 following a unanimous vote by the 30 Major League Baseball Club owners to centralize all of Baseball's Internet operations, MLB Advanced Media LP (MLBAM) is the interactive media and Internet company of Major League Baseball. MLBAM manages the official league site, www.MLB.com, and each of the 30 individual Club sites to create the most comprehensive Major League Baseball resource on the Internet. MLB.com offers fans the most complete baseball information on the Web, including up-to-date statistics, game summaries, extensive historical information, and exclusive features about Major League Baseball events and programs, including on-line ticket sales, baseball merchandise, authenticated memorabilia and collectibles, fantasy games, radio broadcast of games, pitch-by-pitch enactment of games, and video highlights.

About Digital Island

Digital Island is the leading provider of managed Internet infrastructure for enterprises that need to give their customers a great Web experience in order to drive e-Business transactions. The company integrates managed hosting, content delivery and network services to bypass Internet congestion and guarantee fast and relevant interactions. Digital Island is headquartered in San Francisco, and its global e-Business delivery network reaches 35 countries. www.digitalisland.net

This release may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Important factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements, include but are not limited to: the company's short operating history which makes it difficult to predict its future results of operations; the company's history of operating losses and expected future losses which could impede its ability to address the risks and difficulties encountered by companies in new and rapidly evolving markets; the company's future operating results could fluctuate which may cause volatility or a decline in the price of the company's stock; the possibility that the company may not be able to price its services above the overall cost of bandwidth causing its financial results to suffer; and other factors detailed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.