By Ryan Bologna
Major League Baseball will now feature exclusive games on Peacock TV, NBCUniversal’s streaming service. The series will be called “Sunday Morning Baseball” and first pitch for each game will be at 11:35 a.m. ET on Sundays. The first broadcast will be on May 8 with a matchup between the Chicago White Sox and the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park.
The Red Sox are no stranger to games starting in the morning, as they play at 11:05 a.m ET on Patriot’s Day every year. But this is a change for the rest of the league — all of the other Sunday games that usually start at 1:05 p.m. ET will be pushed back 30 minutes.
Here is the MLB on Peacock schedule for 2022 pic.twitter.com/FBr2YbP1ik
— Maury Brown (@BizballMaury) April 6, 2022
This raises the question as to how much these exclusive streaming deals will change the viewer experience. In this case, not only will it change the experience for the viewers, but it will change the way Sundays look during the MLB season.
MLB has a similar deal with Apple TV to show games on Friday night as well and if these deals are successful, we could see similar changes in the future. It would be only a matter of time before there is another streaming service ponying up to feature exclusive games on Saturday as well, but these types of deals are not exclusive to MLB. This fall Thursday Night Football will be moving to Amazon Prime Video and according to Amazon, the copmany is going all-in to try to make this work by hiring big-name broadcasters Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit.
Transactions: Al Michaels (pbp) & @KirkHerbstreit (analyst) named voices for #NFL Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime Video.
📷 @NFLonPrime pic.twitter.com/dGqno6unYR
— Announcer Schedules (@announcerskeds) March 23, 2022
It is hard to imagine Monday Night Football leaving ESPN, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other potential opportunities — There has been talk about adding NFL games on Friday night as well. But could that be another deal with a different streaming service?
This is upsetting to many fans, and it is frustrating that in the near future, sports fans will need subscriptions to seemingly countless streaming services to watch their favorite teams. But that doesn’t mean that there are no benefits to this trend. ESPN+ is one of the best bargains right with every out-of-market NHL game on the service along with a ton of college sports, exclusive articles, and shows.
An important factor to watch in all of this is whether the leagues can keep games concentrated on a few services to make it easier for fans to find the games. The NHL did a good job with this as pretty much any game can be found on ESPN+, while MLB has games on a variety of services.
When sports went to cable television, there was a similar adjustment that fans needed to make. I am all for modernizing the way we view sports and I think streaming services can be a way to do that, but leagues should be mindful about how it could impact the fan experience.
Picture Credit: monticello
