The 2026 Major League Baseball season starts tonight, with a classic matchup between the New York Yankees and the San Fransisco Giants. In yesteryear, this would have been a cross-town battle between the boroughs of the Bronx and Upper Manhattan. Today it is a transcontinental meeting.
Regardless, I won’t be watching, though I would love to take in the game. I have woken up at 3am to watch past Opening Days from Tokyo, Japan and Sydney, Australia, but here when the game is in my home country? I can’t watch. That is because the game is on Netflix and I don’t happen to have a Netflix subscription.
Baseball, according to the official line, wants to expand the sport and make it appeal to a global audience. Why, then, for the love of baseball, do they fracture the viewing experience? Why are games on Peacock, AppleTV, Netflix, traditional cable channels, or on a plethora of local affiliates, all of which cost a separate subscription fee to watch?
I know that American capitalism needs to make their dirty money, but that is diametrically opposed to this “global audience” and “wide appeal” message that corporate baseball is talking so much about. I doubt anyone can afford all these separate subscriptions these days just to watch baseball. And don’t get me started on that fact that the local team is also behind a paywall on their own little network. What happened to over-the-air and free?
Everyone wants their share of the pie, and I know this is so much screaming into the void, but c’mon, please, Major League Baseball, stop making it so hard to watch Major League Baseball! Really, the only way I am able to watch much baseball at all is through MLB.TV, which itself is over $100 per season for all out-of-market watching, but I have a hard time justifying that. I have MLB.TV because my mobile carrier, T-Mobile, is a huge sponsor of the sport and comps the subscription for its members. Thus, I get it through my existing mobile service, but if I didn’t, it is a high cost to pay. I would justify it, because I love baseball, but it is still a lot of money, especially if I were to add it to the over $100 to watch the local Texas Rangers. As it is, I miss about twelve games a season when watching my favorite Cleveland Guardians because even the Houston Astros are blacked out on MLB.TV in my area, despite the fact that Houston is four hours away from Dallas. (Cleveland plays both the Rangers and the Astros for at least six games each during the regular season.)
This is worse when you consider the Baltimore-Washington area which contends with several teams, or other metros that have more than one team (Chicago, New York, Los Angeles to name a few others) and all the “local” teams are blacked out. Then MLB.TV becomes even less of a bargain, and all the money to afford the local affiliates is even more cost prohibitive. It is just a lot, especially for a sport that used to be the great American pastime. Even to go down to the stadium in Arlington for me and my parents to take in a game costs an exorbitant amount of money once you add the cost of tickets, fees, parking, and ballpark food. We easily spend over $150 (collectively) for a game (on average about $60-75 per person, depending on how hungry we are).
Baseball ought to be something that isn’t available only to the wealthy or those that don’t mind juggling upwards of seven logins or eight subscriptions. It should be free and accessible to all. As I said, this may be so much a cry falling on deaf ears at this point. I just can’t help calling out in the hopes that someone will eventually listen.
The baseball season starts tonight, but how many will actually tune in, I wonder?
a simple man 