In August, anyone who hadn’t heard of Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM, nicknamed just “BAM”) learned of its importance when Disney spent $1 billion to buy a 33% stake in BAM Tech, the recently spun-off video-streaming arm of BAM. In a press release at the time of the announcement, Disney CEO Bob Iger and ESPN president John Skipper raved about BAM Tech, which will “become a key partner for Disney in the delivery and support of streaming video and other digital products from Disney, ABC Television Group, and ESPN.”

Now another television giant has high praise for MLBAM and BAM Tech. Richard Plepler, the CEO of HBO, was speaking on a panel at the Vanity Fair Summit in San Francisco on Thursday with Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior VP of Internet software. The topic was the future of television, viewed through the lens of HBO’s partnership with Apple.

Plepler was asked by moderator Mellody Hobson of Ariel Investments, “What have you learned from each other?”

He responded: “When I first called up Eddy to see if they wanted to do this, I said to him, ‘Look, our natural DNA is obviously not technology, it’s content, and we have a long learning curve, and we could use your counsel and your input.’ And they gave us great counsel and input, including partnering up with MLBAM, which helped us get HBO Now off the ground.”

There’s a lot to unpack there. For background: When HBO first put out an iPad app, HBO Go, in 2010, it was only for HBO cable subscribers, and the streaming technology had a lot of hiccups at first, with viewers complaining about skipping during an all-important season finale of “Game of Thrones.”

For the release of HBO Now last year, HBO’s first ever over-the-top streaming app ($15 per month, no HBO cable subscription required), it turned to MLBAM (pre-BAM Tech spinoff), which does white-label streaming services for everyone from the NHL to WWE to the PGA Tour to Glenn Beck’s network TheBlaze. It has been a success: the streaming quality on HBO Now has been praised for its smoothness.

Now we know that it was Cue of Apple who recommended BAM Tech to Plepler and HBO. It’s significant as yet another reminder of the quiet power of BAM Tech, which has, over many years, ascended to become the most premium digital streaming company around. BAM Tech runs all of NHL’s digital properties, and BAM Tech is handling the streaming technology for Twitter’s live streams of Thursday Night Football this year.

From here out, MLBAM (still wholly owned by the 30 pro baseball clubs) and BAM Tech (58% owned by MLB, 33% by Disney, and 9% by NHL) will only prove to be more significant in the future of digital television consumption. Bam Tech is reportedly valued at $3 billion.

—

Daniel Roberts is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering sports business and technology. Follow him on Twitter at @readDanwrite.

Read more:

Apple exec: ‘Television needs to be reinvented’

Pixar, Marvel heads: Every movie we make is at some point the ‘worst movie ever made’

How baseball’s tech arm got so big that Disney had to have a piece

Disney is so much more than Mickey Mouse now