{"id":480206,"date":"2026-02-20T16:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T16:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/480206\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T16:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T16:34:10","slug":"espn-mlb-take-new-swing-at-games-they-hope-bring-die-hard-fans-to-streaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/480206\/","title":{"rendered":"ESPN, MLB Take New Swing at Games They Hope Bring Die-Hard Fans to Streaming"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last year, <a class=\"ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/company\/co1052081\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ESPN<\/a> and <a class=\"ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/company\/co0094061\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Major League Baseball<\/a> appeared to have struck out. A decades-old alliance was torn asunder, with the Disney sports giant backing away from its long-running \u201cSunday Night Baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those Sunday games have gone to <a class=\"ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/company\/co0847663\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NBC<\/a>, but ESPN believes it has gotten its corporate mitt on something better.<\/p>\n<p>ESPN on Friday started distributing <a class=\"ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/company\/co0874917\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MLB.TV<\/a> via the ESPN App and ESPN.com., a venture that ESPN Chairman <a class=\"ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity\" href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm4274844\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jimmy Pitaro<\/a> has long coveted. The pact, part of a realignment of MLB\u2019s sports-rights relationships gives ESPN purview over thousands of games that are made available to fans outside a specific&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year, ESPN and Major League Baseball appeared to have struck out. A decades-old alliance was torn asunder,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1508,1509,236,1510,954,1506,363,206,3,99,1507,1505,92],"class_list":["post-480206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-actors","tag-actresses","tag-celebrities","tag-directors","tag-films","tag-hollywood","tag-mlb","tag-movies","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-stars","tag-television","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}