YouTub has signed a deal with Major League Baseball to stream 13 games during the 2019 season globally — free for viewers to watch and available exclusively through YouTube in the US, Canada and Puerto Rico.
The games will stream live on MLB’s official YouTube channel and via a new channel on YouTube TV. Coverage will feature pre- and post-game shows. Although the deal is worldwide, a couple of countries are excluded including in Europe Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, and Luxembourg.
“It’s incredible to team up with Major League Baseball for this first-of-its-kind deal together to provide both diehard baseball fans and our YouTube community with live games exclusively on YouTube and YouTube TV,” said Timothy Katz, YouTube’s head of sports and news partnerships.
“With Major League Baseball’s expanding international fan base, we are confident YouTube’s global audience will bring fans around the world together in one place to watch the games and teams they love.”
“YouTube is an enormously popular video platform with impressive global reach,” said Chris Tully, MLB’s EVP of global media.
“With the media consumption habits of our fans continuing to evolve, MLB is committed to both expanding our roster or national broadcast platforms and to presenting live games in new ways to our fans.”
The games on YouTube will be produced by the MLB Network. MLB, which has been live streaming games since 2002, started its YouTube channel in 2005, according to the parties. MLB generated 1.25 billion channel views in 2018, up 25 percent from the year before.
MLB has been live-streaming games since 2002 on its pioneering MLB.tv service, and the league launched its YouTube channel in 2005. In 2018, the MLB’s YouTube channel garnered 1.25 billion views, up nearly 25% from 2017.
