{"id":214526,"date":"2026-04-01T13:51:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T13:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/214526\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T13:51:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T13:51:10","slug":"mor-rays-games-for-tampa-bay-mlb-fans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/214526\/","title":{"rendered":"MOR Rays Games For Tampa Bay MLB Fans"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

DELRAY BEACH, FLA. \u2014 The Major League Baseball team based in the Tampa-St. Petersburg market that intends to stay there, once a new stadium agreement is finally reached, can celebrate another agreement of importance \u2014 it now has a limited over-the-air broadcast agreement in place with Hearst Television.<\/p>\n

Hearst stations in four Florida television markets will carry a small package of Tampa Bay Rays games during the 2026 season.<\/p>\n

A total of 10 games will be seen, including the Rays\u2019 April 6 home opener against the Chicago Cubs in a rebuilt Tropicana Field, which was inoperable across the 2025 season due to hurricane-related wind damage suffered in 2024.<\/p>\n

In the Tampa-St. Petersburg DMA, unaffiliated\u00a0WMOR-TV\u00a0will air the games; the channel is widely distributed across the sprawling market and can be seen on cable systems in such distant locales as Sebring, Fla.<\/p>\n

Additionally, WESH-2 and sibling WKCF \u201cCW18\u201d in Orlando will carry games, as will a digital multicast channel aligned with WPBF-25 in the West Palm Beach market that\u2019s home to MeTV.\u00a0RBR+TVBR\u00a0is able to access this WPBF subchannel through prime channel placement on Hotwire Fision cable TV service in the West Palm Beach DMA.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, Hearst\u2019s recently acquired WBBH-20 and shared services partner WZVN \u201cABC7\u201d will air games through a Heroes & Icons-aligned digital multicast channel for Southwest Florida. Hearst manages WZVN on behalf of Montclair Communications.<\/p>\n

The arrangement with the Rays follows an agreement in Tampa and Orlando that allows Hearst stations to air 10\u00a0Orlando Magic games as a simulcast during the 2025-26 regular season through partnerships that include the flailing FanDuel Sports Network Florida.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Rays also comes at a time when the NAB is pushing a message that live and local over-the-air TV should be the outlet for pro sports, as subscription video-on-demand hubs including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV snag MLB rights agreements and are putting games in a walled silo requiring a cover charge, if you will. In conversations with\u00a0RBR+TVBR, this, to the NAB, differs from the rise of regional sports networks on cable TV and snatching MLB broadcast rights, seen across the 1990s.<\/p>\n

For Hearst Television VP of Programming Shannon Coggins, \u201cThis partnership combines the Rays\u2019 outstanding popularity and brand with Hearst Television\u2019s powerful array of stations throughout Central and South Florida, one of many strong regional concentrations across our national footprint of nearly three dozen stations. Local broadcast television remains the ideal platform for sports organizations to connect with fans at scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

The games to be televised are (all times Eastern):\u00a0<\/p>\n

Monday, April 6, 4 p.m. vs. Chicago Cubs on WMOR, CW18, WPBF\u2019s MeTV and Gulf Coast ABC<\/p>\n

Friday, April 24, 7 p.m. vs. Minnesota on WMOR, WESH 2, WPBF\u2019s MeTV and Gulf Coast H&I<\/p>\n

Friday, May 8, 7 p.m. at Boston on WMOR, WESH 2, WPBF\u2019s MeTV and Gulf Coast ABC<\/p>\n

Sunday, May 24, 1:30 p.m. at New York Yankees on WMOR, CW18, WPBF\u2019s MeTV and Gulf Coast NBC<\/p>\n

Friday, June 5, 7 p.m. at Miami on WMOR, WESH 2, WPBF\u2019s MeTV and Gulf Coast H&I<\/p>\n

Friday, June 19, 7 p.m. vs. Washington on WMOR, WESH 2, WPBF\u2019s MeTV and Gulf Coast H&I<\/p>\n

Friday, July 17, 7 p.m. at Boston on WMOR, WESH 2, WPBF\u2019s MeTV and Gulf Coast ABC<\/p>\n

Thursday, July 23, 3 p.m. at Toronto on WMOR, CW18, WPBF\u2019s MeTV and Gulf Coast ABC<\/p>\n

Sunday, August 9, 4 p.m. at Seattle on WMOR, CW18, WPBF\u2019s MeTV and Gulf Coast ABC<\/p>\n

Wednesday, August 12, 3 p.m. at the Athletics on WMOR, CW18, WPBF\u2019s MeTV and Gulf Coast ABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DELRAY BEACH, FLA. \u2014 The Major League Baseball team based in the Tampa-St. Petersburg market that intends to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[19183,22175,97866,135,3815,137,136,68653,97867,97868],"class_list":["post-214526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-cw18","tag-hearst-television","tag-mor-tv-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-tv-cable-news","tag-tv1","tag-wpbf-25"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}