When Netflix teed off in the golf space in 2023 with the silly Netflix Cup, it put its breakfast ball directly into the water. The streamer’s efforts to enter fight sports have been mixed, and its NFL games have been … fine. But now, with its Major League Baseball opening night rights, the streamer is messing with the wrong fan base.
On Wednesday evening, the New York Yankees will take on the San Francisco Giants exclusively on Netflix. And in this instance, the game truly is an exclusive. The teams’ local markets, including the YES Network cable station in New York City, will be blacked out from their own Opening Day game. That is somewhat unusual, especially when you consider that the Yankees are the primary owner of YES, currently with a 26 percent stake in the RSN (regional sports network) giant. (The NFL does not allow streamers to circumvent home TV markets for its games, but the NBA allows for local blackouts of its national streaming games.)
It doesn’t help any that tristate-area Yankees fans can’t even go see the game in person — not unless they’re willing to fly across the country to the Bay Area. It’s probably OK: New Yorkers are famously chill people. (Get your Cracker Jack ready: X, FKA Twitter, is going to explode around 8 p.m. ET tonight as Yankees fans especially find out about this in real-time.) The YES consolation prize will be Friday’s 4:35 p.m. ET game against the Giants, the second game of the regular season.
Even subscribers to Major League Baseball’s own streaming service MLB.TV, which can cost as much as $150 per season to access every team’s out-out-market games, can only watch Yankees-Giants with a separate Netflix plan. The game will be broadcast on radio, including in the New York-metropolitan area on sports-talk station WFAN. Subscribers to MLB.TV and MLB+ can listen to live game audio via the MLB app.
While Netflix’s involvement in baseball no doubt raises the profile and potential reach of the game on a national and international basis, and those are positives, the streamer’s habit of making a glitzy spectacle out of things may not work so well here. For football it was all pretty OK, save the dumb Santa Claus coats with a giant Netflix logo. The NFL, like Netflix, sells itself.
But diehard supporters of what is still technically America’s pastime — baseball, not football, which is the game we actually prefer — generally want a naturalistic presentation of the sport steeped in tradition on par perhaps only with golf. The sights and sounds baseball fans seek each March are not Netflix’s “Tudum” screen. Netflix does a lot of things exceedingly well, hence its dominant position in the marketplace, but the tech company and industry disruptor doesn’t really do tradition.
Baseball, which has historically been nothing but convention, itself has evolved for the Netflix and YouTube era we inhabit. The streamings wars brought about new players, but also consumer expectations of instant gratification. It also shortened our attention spans to not-baseball levels. The game’s pace-of-play problem has been addressed with a pitch clock and new extra-innings rules. The pitch clock, which works like a shot clock in basketball, has been an almost-universally welcomed alteration. The extra innings rule, which places an automatic runner on second base from the 10th-inning onward, has been quite a bit more divisive. (As has the larger size of those bases, meant to encourage more running and scoring.)
Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos attends The Netflix Cup, a live Netflix Sports event, at Wynn Las Vegas Golf on November 14, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
David Becker/Getty Images
Netflix is, of course, doing its best here — it’s just that Netflix’s “best” is too often overly promotional. The company’s Christmas Day NFL games were fine from a telecast standpoint, but Netflix cannot help itself from overpacking the overall package with so many cameos it would make, well, Cameo blush. (Netflix is just taking a page out of the big broadcast network playbooks for decades, including lead-ins and house ads for favored new scripted TV series.)
The NFL presentations, for example, were infiltrated by special guests Bert Kreischer, Tom Segura and WWE Superstar Seth Rollins, there to plug a pair of Netflix comedy specials and Monday Night Raw, respectively. (Kreischer was also a part of The Netflix Cup — find out below if he kept his shirt on.)
For a company that once famously swore off commercials, Netflix sure shoehorns in as much self-advertising as possible. At the Netflix Cup, which to be fair was not intended to be a serious golf match, participants could only tee off when the killer Squid Game doll temporarily looked away from the tee box. There was a whole lot of dumb Netflix-themed things like that.
For MLB Opening Night, Netflix has pieced together an analyst team that includes Barry Bonds, Albert Pujols, Anthony Rizzo, Elle Duncan (host of Skyscraper Live, which also brought back Rollins), CC Sabathia, Hunter Pence and Lauren Shehadi. Bonds is the standout “get” in terms of position within sport — albeit it controversial — and his reputation for general reclusiveness, but his TV ability is unproven. Also, he’s arguably the least-liked baseball player this side of John Rocker since Ty Cobb.
In general, Netflix’s on-camera baseball squad has way more playing experience than broadcasting experience, which is not ideal. We saw this with its NFL games as well. The announce teams Netflix pieced together for Christmas were capable and knowledgable of the game, but had limited experience in the roles and almost no history of collaboration. That is to be expected considering the streamer’s relative newness to the space, but such immaturity can jump off the screen. (Again, see Kreischer, Bert.)
L-R) Bert Kreischer, Carlos Sainz Jr. and Justin Thomas attend The Netflix Cup, a live Netflix Sports event, at Wynn Las Vegas Golf on November 14, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
David Becker/Getty Images for Netflix
Enter Matt Vasgersian, a veteran play-by-play guy for the Los Angeles Angels and a studio host for MLB Network and Fox Sports. Vasgersian knows his stuff inside and out, which will be crucial tonight when his wingmen in the booth are Pence and Sabathia. Pence, a former Giants outfielder and DH, has five years of broadcasting experience, so he’ll be solid, but Sabathia, the hall-of-fame pitcher for the Cleveland Indians (at the time) and the Yankees, is basically just dipping his cleat in the waters. Let’s be clear: Pence and Sabathia are flanking Vasgersian because they famously played for the teams playing tonight. You can hire pretty specifically when there are just three events to staff. Beyond tonight, Netflix will exclusively present the Home Run Derby and the annual Field of Dreams game. (Guess where Field of Dreams is streaming?)
MLB Network’s production team will produce MLB Opening Night as well as its pregame and postgame coverage, and that’s a good thing. It will do so in partnership with EverWonder, the producer of some Jake Paul Netflix flights, the streamer’s Christmas Day games and other documentaries and unscripted events; TBD on that influence.
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