Major League Baseball announces 3-year TV deals with Netflix, NBC, ESPN
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MLB lands new media deals with Netflix, NBC and ESPN as league restructures TV future.
On the heels of a 2025 season that saw large viewership increases, including the most watched postseason in eight years, and a World Series Game 7 that was the most watched Major League Baseball game in 34 years.
MLB announced Wednesday that it has formed new three-year media rights agreements with Netflix, NBCUniversal and ESPN.
MLB has formed new three-year media rights agreements with Netflix, NBCUniversal, and ESPN. The agreements, which cover rights for the 2026-2028 MLB seasons, mark the return of NBC to regularly airing MLB games on its broadcast network for the first time in 26 years, will expand Netflix's engagement with MLB from documentaries to live baseball event coverage for the first time, and will extend MLB and ESPN's long-term relationship to 39 consecutive seasons.
Major League Baseball restructuring its broadcast future
The new agreements will give ESPN rights to out-of-market games for all 30 teams and six in-market clubs.
NBC/Peacock will become the new home of the first round of the playoffs and Sunday Night Baseball, while Netflix will showcase the standalone Opening Day game in prime time, the Home Run Derby and the 'Field of Dreams' game.
Sunday Night Baseball will shift from ESPN, where it aired since 1990, to NBCUniversal, which also secured the rights to Sunday Leadoff and the Wild Card Series in the postseason for NBC and Peacock.
Netflix will now air the T-Mobile Home Run Derby, an Opening Night exclusive and special event games set to include the 2026 MLB at Field of Dreams Game and the World Baseball Classic in Japan.
And ESPN will receive a national midweek game package throughout the season while also acquiring the rights to sell MLB.TV, the league's out-of-market streaming service that set a record with 19.4 billion minutes watched in 2025.
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