Facebook in talks to stream MLB games once a week
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Michelle Clancy
| 25 February 2017

Opening Day for Major League Baseball in the US is 3 April, and Facebook is giving fans a new way to watch.


Reuters is reporting that the social network is looking to do a deal with the league that will let it stream one MLB game per week — very similar to Twitter’s arrangement with the NFL to stream Thursday Night Football last season. That experiment proved out the case for social media-as-distributors: the first NFL game to be streamed on Twitter drew more than 2.3 million viewers. Facebook also is in the midst of building a premium video option, so the idea makes all kinds of sense for the company.

The deal would bring new fans to the MLB and offer it a way to engage Millennials, who famously eschew traditional live-linear TV for other consumption methods. It would also give it more international exposure; access online would allow folks from baseball-crazed China, for instance, to follow the world’s top league live.

“The scope of their audience is worldwide,” said sports media consultant Lee Berke, speaking to Reuters. “They have a range of audiences and sports loyalties they can appeal to.”

It’s likely that baseball’s main distribution partners, like Fox and ESPN, won’t be in love with the idea of streaming games. But arguably, the sheer number of games in any given season means that fans are unlikely to find themselves at home for all of them; there’s a case to be made that the ratings effect will be additive rather than cannibalising.

Baseball has been dabbling in digital experiments a bit of late: Sports Illustrated and FOX Sports teamed up last autumn on a live digital baseball pre-game show entitled Live @ The World Series, which aired on location from every game of the Fall Classic. Episodes aired live on the @MLBonFOX Facebook page and were shared across various Fox Sports and Sports Illustrated Facebook channels, reaching a combined audience of 13.5 million users.