As Major League Baseball looks to continue growing their sport, they have increasingly relied on streaming as more consumers get rid of their cable subscription each year.
In addition to MLB.TV, the league has streaming deals with Apple TV+, Youtube and Peacock, while still maintaining their regional deals with cable and satellite providers. So far, the results are encouraging, at least for MLB’s own platform.
MLB.TV set numerous records for streaming through the first part of the 2022 season as fans watched more than 2.8 billion minutes of live games on MLB.TV. This made the start of the 2022 season the most-watched 40-day period since the platform released on August 26, 2002.
In addition, total games watched are up +9% compared to last season’s previous record total on MLB.TV over the same time period.
MLB.TV companion programming consumption is also increasing significantly. Viewership for Big Inning, which features live look-ins and real-time highlights from all 30 teams, has seen their minutes watched increase by 653%. Pregame users per game are also up +104% and postgame users per game are up +84%.
In 2022, MLB.TV registered the three most-watched days ever and nine of the top 10 most-watched days in history, which includes April 12, 2022 (the most-watched day), followed by April 8 and April 9.
This season has also marked the three most-watched games ever San Francisco 49ers Jerseys and seven of the top 10 most-watched games ever. The most-watched games in MLB.TV history are Red Sox at Yankees on April 8, and two April 7 games, Brewers at Cubs and Guardians at Royals.
Perhaps even more impressive is MLB.TV has also set these marks with more games being streamed exclusively on Apple TV, Peacock and Youtube TV.
Later this season, the Los Angeles Dodgers will play the Cleveland Guardians exclusively on Apple TV on June 17, and their Aug. 28 road matchup against the Miami Marlins will be streamed only on Peacock.
MLB websites and apps also seeing growth
Additionally, digital traffic is up across all of MLB’s digital platforms, which is an encouraging sign for the growth of the sport.
Weekly active users are up +10% across the network of MLB websites, the MLB app, MLB Ballpark app, and MLB Play, the league’s new predictive gaming app. Usage of the Ballpark app, which is the #1 sports app in the Apple App Store since the start of the season, has soared with daily active users increasing +128% compared to the first 40 days of the 2019 season, the most recent played with all 30 ballparks at full capacity since Opening Day.
Fans are also watching MLB content on YouTube for longer as the minutes-watched per viewer on MLB’s YouTube account is +53% more than last season.