Watch the Webby Awards Live

The 15th Annual Webby Awards ceremony streams live from the Hammerstein Ballroom tonight in New York City starting with the Red Carpet Show at 8PM EST. The main awards show event commences a half hour later at 8:30PM EST.

Lisa Kudrow will play host (a role I’m guessing she’ll split with Fiona Wallace, the former Friends star’s character from the original web series Web Therapy) and welcome a variety of special guests, including LCD Soundsystem, Dan Savage, IBM’s Watson, Adrian Grenier, Daniel Radcliffe, Anna Wintour, Zach Galifianakis, and more. Norah Jones and the Gregory Brothers will also provide a portion of the night’s musical entertainment.

Hosting the live stream behind the camera is Major League Baseball Advanced Media, the division of the MLB that streams at least 4,860 Major League Baseball games per season and runs the websites MLB.com and all 30 Major Leage Baseball organizations.

If the partnership between the Webby Awards and MLB Advanced Media sounds odd at first, it won’t after this explanation. Streaming all those games and hosting all those websites (which garner millions of viewers per day) and executing both those tasks with the level of user experience you’d expect from Major League Baseball requires a robust technological infrastructure and a helluva lot of expertise at live streaming events. Luckily for the Webbys, its partner possesses both.

Live streaming is MLBAM’s business, one that it’s practiced perfecting for the past decade. (Here’s your daily dose of Did You Know: The Advanced Media division of MLB was founded in 2000). Now that the organization feels totally comfortable with its technology and ability to stream live baseball, it’s branching out of the wide world of sports and into the star-studded world of entertainment.

If this year’s Webby Awards go well, it’ll be the first of many live streamed events brought to you by Major League Baseball Advanced Media. If this year’s Webby Awards go very well, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some Lady Gaga or whatever is the next iteration of Live 8 concerts brought to you by MLBAM in the near future.

Until then, tune into Facebook or YouTube tonight to watch the Webby Awards live.