Facebook slides into live streaming deal with MLB (FB)

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May 22, 2017 3:28 PM

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Facebook will live-stream at least 20 Friday Major League Baseball (MLB) games during this year’s regular season, according to the MLB.

While only users in the US will be able to watch, the new partnership certainly extends access to games beyond their local markets.

Facebook is aggressively investing in live video, and the addition of MLB follows its agreement to live stream some games from the top Mexican and Spanish soccer leagues.

Terms were undisclosed, but Facebook likely won’t pay a dime in this partnership. The games are not exclusive to Facebook, which will stream from the feed of a local broadcast rights holder. This is likely the very early stages of a test of viewer receptiveness to watching games live on Facebook. The 20 games currently set to be streamed are a tiny portion of the MLB’s over 2,400 regular season games.

Here's what's significant about the deal:

Other tech giants are aggressively pursuing sports, too. Amazon secured rights to next season’s Thursday Night Football games for $50 million, five times the amount paid by Twitter for the same games in 2016. This highlights how competitive the market for streaming sports rights is becoming. Twitter also has deals to stream games from the MLB, the the National Hockey and Lacrosse leagues.

Viewership across major sports programming like the NFL and English Premier League has underwhelmed in the 2016-17 TV season. Meanwhile, subscriptions for pay-TV and, in turn, for sports networks like ESPN, are in free fall.

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