Contrary to Rumors, Apple Will Continue Broadcasting ‘Friday Night Baseball’

Anthony Castrovince, reporting for MLB.com on the new broadcast rights agreement that will cover the next three seasons of baseball:

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. [...]

FOX/FS1 will continue to be the home of the All-Star Game and regular season games, as well as the World Series, League Championship Series, and Division Series presented by Booking.com. TBS will continue to house LCS and Division Series telecasts, plus regular season games on Tuesday nights. Apple TV will continue to stream “Friday Night Baseball” doubleheaders throughout the regular season.

Back in August, Kendall Baker of Yahoo Sports reported:

  • Apple is fully out. RIP Friday Night Baseball
  • NBC/Peacock is in, for Friday and Sunday exclusive and Wild Card
  • MLB TV being sold to ESPN (for a boatload of $$$)
  • Netflix gets HR Derby

He batted .750 on that tweet.

★ Wednesday, 19 November 2025