MLB Arrives In The Streaming Era With Netflix Opening Night

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - MARCH 25: Netflix Broadcaster and NFL Quarterback Jameis Winston interviews Aaron Judge #99 of the New York Yankees before the game against the San Francisco Giants on Opening Day at Oracle Park on March 25, 2026 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images) Getty Images In Cincinnati, the tradition of Opening Day is one that has been celebrated with an official city holiday and municipal parade for more than 100 years.

And for decades, after the Cincinnati Reds threw out the first pitch, the other teams around the country would commence their own Opening Day games, a tradition that has become “like Christmas, except it’s warmer,” as Reds Hall of Famer Pete Rose once put it . In the early 1990s, Major League Baseball saw an opportunity to frontrun Opening Day by offering broadcasters a single regular-season game to debut on its eve. And now it has leveraged that special event to launch its milestone partnership with Netflix, the world’s largest subscription streaming platform, as it looks to answer pressing questions about its future audience.

On Wednesday’s “MLB Opening Night,” Netflix hosted the New York Yankees against the San Francisco Giants at Oracle Park, introducing the new baseball season with an exclusive broadcast that emphasized the one-off nature of the game. In describing the platform’s live sports strategy, Netflix vice president Gabe Spitzer has leaned on a decidedly disruptive adjective: the platform wants to present sports “in an eventized way,” he told Sports Business Journal . Opening Night was among the handful of special MLB events that Netflix acquired the exclusive rights to broadcast this season.

Fans will have to subscribe to the platform to enjoy the Home Run Derby in July and the Field of Dreams Game in August as well. Netflix Blends Tradition With Disruption In an effort to “eventize” the first pitch of the baseball season, Netflix embraced some of the traditional sports broadcasting features that are popular on platforms like NBC, FOX and ESPN. “From first pitch to last out, we’re covering a baseball game.