Facebook’s at bat
Exclusive streams for 25 MLB games
Facebook is swinging for the fences when it comes to live baseball.
The social network run by Mark Zuckerberg announced Friday that it reached a deal with Major League Baseball for exclusive Web-streaming rights to 25 games this season.
The partnership — which begins on April 4 with a matchup between the Mets and Phillies — will see Facebook take on more than two dozen afternoon, weekday games.
The live streams will be produced by the MLB Network cable channel, but shown only on the Facebook Watch platform, which will allow games to be viewed on smartphones, tablets and computers, as well as on Web-connected TVs.
Last year, Facebook streamed 20 big-league games — about one local TV broadcast each Friday night during the regular season.
The deal is worth between $30 million and $35 million, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the news.
The agreement is a coup for Facebook, which had not pre- viously secured an exclusive streaming deal with any of the major American sports leagues.
It is also the latest instance of Silicon Valley’s biggest names getting involved with America’s favorite sports leagues. Twitter partnered with the NFL to stream 10 Thursday Night Football games in 2016, while Amazon took over the TNF mantle in 2017.
Last year, Facebook also struck a deal with Fox Sports to stream the UEFA Champions League.
“While this specific deal likely won’t prove material on the surface, it’s increasingly evident that Facebook is in a prime position to capture sports rights from the media establishment,” said James Cakmak, an analyst for Monness, Crespi, Hardt.
The analyst added that it’s likely the MLB views this as more of a test than any sort of money-making endeavor, noting that afternoon games on weekdays typically aren’t marquee events.
“You can test the hell out of throwaway games in a way that minimizes risk for both sides,” Cakmak said.