MLB.TV Takeover Possibility by Peacock or YouTube: New Report

Major League Baseball (MLB) is making big changes to its MLB.TV streaming service, which lets fans watch out-of-market games. These changes show how the league is adapting to a world where more and more people are watching sports online. Reports from The Athletic on April 9, 2025, say that MLB is considering sharing MLB.TV—or parts of it—with TV networks and digital platforms like NBC, Google, YouTube, or Fox. This could mean that MLB might not run the service directly, which it has been doing since 2002.

One reason for this change is that ESPN decided to end its contract with MLB early. The contract was worth $550 million each year, but ESPN was not making enough money from it. MLB also ended its part of the deal, with Commissioner Rob Manfred saying that ESPN is a “shrinking platform.” While ESPN will still show some games, this split pushed MLB to look for new ways to share its games, leading to discussions about what to do with MLB.TV.

MLB.TV started in 2002 and has become a big part of how fans watch games online. For $149.99 per year, fans can watch all out-of-market regular-season games, with different pricing for in-market packages. In 2024, fans watched over 14.5 billion minutes of games on MLB.TV, showing how popular it is. Now, MLB is thinking about letting another company run the service to reach even more fans and make more money. Companies like NBC, YouTube, Google, and Fox are interested in bringing MLB games to their platforms.

All of this is happening as traditional TV networks face challenges, like regional sports networks (RSNs) going out of business. This has made it harder for some teams to show games on TV. To adapt, 27 teams now offer streaming options directly to fans, bypassing blackout rules that have limited coverage. By licensing out MLB.TV, MLB hopes to keep up with the trend of fans wanting to watch games online, without the limits of cable TV.

As MLB looks toward the future, these talks show how sports are changing in the age of streaming. Whether MLB.TV ends up with a traditional TV network or a big tech company, it’s clear that the league wants to make sure fans can watch games online, anytime they want, without being tied to old TV ways.