By all accounts, Major League Baseball should be seeing viewership numbers sliding. With 14 teams now under MLB’s broadcast umbrella, changes that have brought in NBC and Netflix after ESPN opted out of their Sunday Night Baseball package, baseball has never been more fragmented. To add, MLB has had to go up against the FIFA World Cup, which has seen incredible interest. And yet, as the league hits the All-Star break, it is seeing numbers that show the sport is exceptionally healthy.
Local TV, Streaming Up
A significant disruptor heading into the season was the continued fallout of Main Street Sports (the prior Diamond Sports Group). The beleaguered owner of nearly half of the league’s regional sports networks had been under the cloud of bankruptcy, and in the offseason, all of the remaining clubs left. As Main Street Sports, which owned the FanDuel family of channels, collapsed under bankruptcy, and the Nats no longer were tied to MASN, the Nationals, Brewers, Cardinals, Marlins, Rays, Reds, Royals, Tigers, and Braves were left to scramble right up to Opening Day. The Seattle Mariners decided to shutter ROOT Sports NW at the end of the 2025 season and joined the fray. When coupled with other clubs leaving in previous seasons, all told MLB now produces 14 teams.
According to Nielsen NSI, using TV households as of July 4, 2026, measuring an avg of 2,368 local games, the 14-team collective delivery is presently sitting +4% over the same point in time last season.
More broadly, when excluding Canada, which Nielsen does not track, the remaining 29 clubs are situated among 26 markets (two teams each in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago). At the local level, 14 of MLB’s markets (with a tie for first in a 15th market), a club’s primetime game telecasts outperform every station’s primetime daypart average in the market. To add, in 20 of MLB’s 26 markets, a club’s primetime game telecasts outperform every cable network’s primetime daypart average in the market.
One sizable difference with the changes are in relationship to viewership on linear television and streaming.
According to Nielsen, linear television viewership for the 29 U.S. MLB clubs are down -2% year-over-year. But that is shifting to streaming.
According to Playfly, Sports, which handles advertising bundles for the MLB regional sports networks, as well as for clubs that have gone over to MLB, where MLB Network has handled production, for streaming, 27 of their 29 teams that are reporting streaming data, has provided strong growth as a whole, sitting at +24% unique streamers per game, with avg minutes streamed up +43%. Additionally, average minutes per streamer are up +15% growth compared to last year, watching 104.4 minutes per game. To put that into context, that is 2x the average viewing minutes across the national networks (51.9).
Large market MLB teams are seeing slight linear audience erosion, but we are still seeing success in those markets with streaming up double-digits (up +14% unique viewership, up +23% total minutes streamed, up +7% minutes per streamer).
So, with fans having to jump through hoops to find their teams, why have numbers continued to be so rosy for Major League Baseball? According to Craig Sloan, CEO of Playfly Sports, there are two certainties driving it.
“Never underestimate a home team fan and their desire to get to the content because you’ve got now half the teams have moved into new environments in the last couple of seasons and there’s been no disruption to your point to the total audience profile,” said Sloan. “The second component is that during the same time period many of these that still remain in the cable environment have been moved out on the digital tiers that are significantly below the total subscriber base of the basic or basic extended tiers, and so you would assume that you know you would have to have had audience degradation, and yet fans are coming in through those direct-to-consumer paths, whatever, where when you aggregate the linear and digital audience, we’re actually seeing more supply than what we had a couple of years ago.”
National Broadcasts Seeing Increase
MLB now sees FOX, Turner, Apple, Netflix, NBC Universal, and ESPN as national partners, another factor in the exceptional amount of fragmentation for fans to find games. And yet, again, the league is seeing increases.
FOX is averaging 2.266 million viewers heading into the All-Star Game, a +10% increase over last year. It is the network’s best start to the regular season since adopting the schedule that starts in April (2023).
Some examples:
- FOX drew 3,335,000 viewers for national FOX Saturday Baseball on the Fourth of July for a two-game slate highlighted by the Cardinals’ victory over the Cubs, making it the most-watched regular season game on any network since 2021’s MLB at Field of Dreams Game on FOX (5,912,000 viewers).
- And FOX Sports helped viewership in other ways by slotting next to FIFA World Cup games. They pulled 5,897,000 viewers to “The MLB All-Star Game Selection Show”, which was the most-watched MLB All-Star Game Selection Show on any network since its inception in 2007.
TNT Sports is seeing its most-watched start ever for the MLB Tuesday franchise since its launch in 2022.
TNT Sports’ coverage of the 2026 MLB regular season is averaging 466,000 viewers across TBS, truTV and HBO Max through its first half of the season (15 games), up 21% vs. 2025. Additionally, Women 2+ viewership is up 41% vs. 2025, helping drive audience growth heading into the second half of the season, and later, MLB Postseason.
Highlights of 2026 MLB regular season coverage across TNT Sports’ networks include:
- Los Angeles Dodgers vs. the Toronto Blue Jays on April 7 averaged 708,000 viewers, peaking at 945,000 viewers, TNT Sports’ most-watched regular season game since 2022 (9/27/22, NYY/TOR)
- Detroit Tigers vs. New York Yankees on June 30 averaged 676,000 viewers, peaking at 796,000, TNT Sports’ second most-watched game of the 2026 regular season
On June 28, NBC Sports saw its return to airing MLB games for the first time since 1995 with the New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox game that went a 10-inning, 5-4 victory by the Red Sox, averaged 4.0 million viewers from 8:28-10:35 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock (coverage on NBC began in the fourth inning), marking the most-watched Sunday Night Baseball game in 15 years (Yankees-Red Sox, August 7, 2011). That game, featuring Hall of Famers Derek Jeter, David Ortiz, and Mariano Rivera was also a one-run Red Sox win (3-2) in 10 innings.
NBC’s Total Audience Delivery viewership, which includes Peacock and NBCSN, of 2.435 million viewers is +46% from last year and marks the best viewership for Sunday Night Baseball since 2008.
Netflix had a new exclusive deal to stream Opening Night in MLB this year, which debuted on Weds, March 25. According to Netflix, that saw an estimated average minute audience (AMA) of 3M US viewers (Live+SD) tuning into the game, according to Nielsen Big Data + Panel.
Data from Netflix will continue to flow in starting tonight as they now host the MLB Home Run Derby.
As for Apple, they do not report numbers for live sports streaming.
FIFA World Cup Not Impacting Local Viewership
The World Cup has been a massive win for FOX Sports at the national level. Whether that has been Group play or since going to elimination games, FOX and FS1 have been smashing records. So, you’d think MLB would be affected. At the local level, that hasn’t been the case.
According to PlayFly Sports’ total audience measurement (National Audience Delivery + Streaming Average Minute Audience) compared to the group stage and round of 32 World Cup games of FOX and FS1, their combined P2+ audience of 6.2 million viewers per night for local MLB games outdelivered 59 of 72 Group Stage games and 6 of 15 round of 32 games.
In total, Playfly MLB outdelivered 75% of Group Stage & RO32 Stage World Cup games with Playfly MLB +16% higher than the tournament average
Why that is may be tied to two factors: first, fans will seek out their home team; and second, MLB actively promoted with FOX Sports and engaged with FIFA to develop content and experiential opportunities to drive engagement on each other’s platforms during the FIFA World Cup.
