Why Netflix is turning Major League Baseball’s opening night into a big event

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Opening Day is often seen as an unofficial holiday for baseball fans, but this year will be a bit different in how people watch the games.

Instead of watching games on traditional sports channels like ESPN, fans will now find their team’s first game of the season available only on Netflix.

The New York Yankees play the San Francisco Giants at Oracle Park on Wednesday. Fans can also watch a special broadcast featuring baseball legends Barry Bonds, Anthony Rizzo, and Albert Pujols, alongside former ESPN host Elle Duncan.

Okay, this is just awesome! As a huge fan of ‘Wednesday,’ I’m so excited to hear that Thing – yeah, the hand – is going to throw the first pitch at a game! It’s such a fun and unexpected Netflix tie-in, and honestly, it’s brilliant.

This is just the newest instance of a streaming service adding live sports to its offerings. Most major platforms, like Amazon Prime, Max, Peacock, and Paramount+, now include some kind of professional sports coverage for their subscribers.

This is the first time a Major League Baseball opening day game will be available worldwide on Netflix, reaching almost a billion viewers in over 190 countries and 50 languages.

I’m really excited about what Netflix is doing with live sports, especially with someone like Gabe Spitzer leading the charge. He explained that it’s not just about reaching the biggest fans, but about growing the audience overall. He envisions someone who might enjoy a sports documentary on Netflix getting curious and tuning into a live game – like a Yankees-Giants matchup – simply because it’s there. That’s what he and the team are really hoping to achieve, and I think it’s a brilliant way to bring new people to the world of sports!

Dodgers

Yoshinobu Yamamoto will start for the Dodgers on opening day for the second year in a row. This time, the game will be at Dodger Stadium on March 26th.

Just over two years ago, Netflix started experimenting with live sports by hosting the Netflix Cup – a golf competition featuring professional golfers and Formula One drivers. This event attracted around 700,000 viewers in the latter part of 2023.

According to Netflix executive Bill Spitzer, the turning point for the company’s foray into live sports was the Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul boxing match in November 2024. The event drew 60 million households worldwide, making it the most-streamed sporting event ever. The huge number of viewers put a strain on Netflix’s system, and many fans experienced buffering or lost the video connection.

In 2024, Netflix began offering a special Christmas Day event by securing the rights to stream two NFL games for $150 million annually. The game between the Minnesota Vikings and Detroit Lions, played in the late afternoon of 2025, broke records, becoming the most-watched NFL game ever streamed with 27.5 million viewers, as reported by Nielsen.

The first game of the season is part of a three-year agreement with Netflix, where the streaming service pays $60 million each year for the rights to broadcast it, along with the Home Run Derby and the yearly Field of Dreams game in Iowa. These games became available because ESPN chose not to renew its previous contract, instead agreeing to a new deal for 30 games and more extensive streaming options.

Netflix is testing out MLB coverage to see if it wants to bid for a bigger deal when the league’s current broadcast contract—including the World Series on Fox—expires after 2028.

The streamer is also likely to discuss a more extensive deal with the NFL once the league starts negotiations for its next media rights contract after the 2029-30 season.

What Netflix is doing with live sports isn’t just about ratings; it’s about creating those shared cultural moments, the kind of events everyone talks about the next day. As Spitzer puts it, they’re aiming for “water-cooler conversation” on a global scale, and honestly, I think they’re on the right track.

The streaming service and the sports league teamed up to move the Yankees-Giants game to Wednesday night in prime time, making it the first game of the season. According to Spitzer, having it as the only game played that day makes it a special kickoff to the season.

Hollywood Inc.

Netflix is focusing its 2026 movie releases on fresh, original stories, particularly comedies and films geared towards younger audiences.

As a huge baseball fan, I’m really excited about MLB partnering with Netflix! It makes total sense – Netflix is everywhere, and they’re clearly bringing a lot of energy and fresh ideas to the game. From MLB’s side, they’ve said Netflix is a perfect partner to reach new fans, especially younger ones, and grow the sport globally. It’s awesome to see them join forces with other major media players to bring baseball to even more people.

Sports media expert Lee Berke believes Netflix is getting into live sports to make certain games more prominent and offer a unique viewing experience that you can’t find anywhere else.

Sports leagues are constantly searching for new events to keep fans engaged and attract sponsors and broadcasters throughout the season, explained Berke. He cited the NBA’s Emirates Cup, sponsored by Emirates airline, and the NHL’s Four Nations Cup as examples. These kinds of events boost excitement, generate revenue, and create a positive cycle of growth.

With the growing popularity of large-scale sporting events, media companies like Netflix have more chances to broadcast them, according to Berke. Ultimately, Berke believes these events are good for the sports industry as a whole.

Berke’s main concern is that spreading sports across so many streaming services and networks could divide viewers. However, these events also offer a chance for leagues to attract more attention, increase income, and cover growing costs.

Hollywood Inc.

David Ellison, the head of Paramount, has been trying to acquire Warner Bros. for several months and expressed his satisfaction that Warner Bros.’s board of directors agreed his offer was better than others.

Netflix, like any streaming service, wants to gain and keep subscribers. Live sports are a reliable way to do that, according to Berke. Popular sports consistently attract viewers, and having the right mix of them can really help a business grow and maintain its subscriber base.

To strengthen its move into live sports, Netflix hired Duncan, a former host of ESPN’s “SportsCenter,” to head up its sports programming. She described ESPN as a highly efficient and consistently successful operation with established methods that had worked well for many years.

Now that Duncan is moving from regular TV to a streaming service, her job is changing. She used to focus on dedicated baseball fans in the US, but now she needs to appeal to a wider, international audience who are simply interested in sports.

As a big movie and TV person, I always thought there was a difference between channels like ESPN and Netflix. ESPN is clearly for those really into sports – the hardcore fans. But Netflix? That’s for everyone. It made me think, how do you get someone who’d rather binge-watch something like ‘Love is Blind’ to give a sports show a chance? It’s a tricky question, figuring out how to draw in a broader audience.

The baseball game will stream Wednesday at 5 p.m. Pacific time.

Times staff writer Stephen Battaglio contributed to this report.

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2026-03-25 13:32