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Apple TV+ Shares 2023 Friday Night MLB Schedule, Subscription Now Required

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Apple today announced that its weekly MLB doubleheader "Friday Night Baseball" returns in April. While the games were free to watch last season, an Apple TV+ subscription is now required, with U.S. pricing set at $6.99 per month or $69 per year.

Apple-TV-Plus-Friday-Night-Baseball-2023.jpg

"Friday Night Baseball" will include two live MLB games each Friday throughout the 2023 regular season. The games will be available to stream in 60 countries and regions, up from 13 last season, with no local broadcast restrictions. The action will begin on Friday, April 7, with the Chicago Cubs facing the Texas Rangers at 2 p.m. Eastern Time and the Atlanta Braves taking on the San Diego Padres at 7 p.m. Eastern Time.

In the U.S., DirecTV will make "Friday Night Baseball" games available to more than 300,000 restaurants, bars, hotel lounges, retail stores, and other venues throughout the regular season on existing satellite TV equipment, according to Apple.

Apple and the MLB shared the "Friday Night Baseball" schedule for the first half of the season, through June 30. Each game will feature "state-of-the-art cameras to present vivid live-action shots," along with live pre-game and post-game coverage.

2023 "Friday Night Baseball" Schedule on Apple TV+
Friday, April 7
Texas Rangers at Chicago Cubs
2 p.m. ET

San Diego Padres at Atlanta Braves
7 p.m. ET

Friday, April 14
San Francisco Giants at Detroit Tigers
6:30 p.m. ET

Los Angeles Angels at Boston Red Sox
7 p.m. ET

Friday, April 21
Toronto Blue Jays at New York Yankees
7 p.m. ET

Houston Astros at Atlanta Braves
7 p.m. ET

Friday, April 28
Philadelphia Phillies at Houston Astros
8 p.m. ET

St. Louis Cardinals at Los Angeles Dodgers
10 p.m. ET

Friday, May 5
Chicago White Sox at Cincinnati Reds
6:30 p.m. ET

Minnesota Twins at Cleveland Guardians
7 p.m. ET

Friday, May 12
Kansas City Royals at Milwaukee Brewers
8 p.m. ET

Chicago Cubs at Minnesota Twins
8 p.m. ET

Friday, May 19
Baltimore Orioles at Toronto Blue Jays
7 p.m. ET

Seattle Mariners at Atlanta Braves
7 p.m. ET

Friday, May 26
San Diego Padres at New York Yankees
7 p.m. ET

Chicago White Sox at Detroit Tigers
6:30 p.m. ET

Friday, June 2
Milwaukee Brewers at Cincinnati Reds
5 p.m. ET

Cleveland Guardians at Minnesota Twins
8 p.m. ET

Friday, June 9
Kansas City Royals at Baltimore Orioles
7 p.m. ET

Seattle Mariners at Los Angeles Angels
9:30 p.m. ET

Friday, June 16
Pittsburgh Pirates at Milwaukee Brewers
8 p.m. ET

Chicago White Sox at Seattle Mariners
10 p.m. ET

Friday, June 23
Pittsburgh Pirates at Miami Marlins
6:30 p.m. ET

New York Mets at Philadelphia Phillies
7 p.m. ET

Friday, June 30
Milwaukee Brewers at Pittsburgh Pirates
7 p.m. ET

Arizona Diamondbacks at Los Angeles Angels
9:30 p.m. ET
Click to expand...
For more "Friday Night Baseball" programming details, read the Apple Newsroom press release.

Article Link: Apple TV+ Shares 2023 Friday Night MLB Schedule, Subscription Now Required
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2023/03/22/apple-tv-plus-friday-night-baseball-schedule/
And these games are blacked out on MLB.TV I assume. Something confuses me about MLB. They talk about the whole blackout situation, yet they sign exclusive deals with both Apple and Peacock and those games are blacked out anyway unless you get a subscription. So if you buy MLB.TV, Peacock, Apple TV, and subscribe to an internet cable package, that's a lot of money just to legally watch baseball. Seems counter productive.
 
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Haha, no thanks. Baseball is a regional sport now... I watched the broadcasts last year for my team the Blue Jays, and the commentary and analysis was so robotic... These people don't have a clue about the inner workings of the team as the local team broadcaster.

They expect me to pay $69 to watch 4-6 games of my team per season? That's as much as it costs me to pay for the sports streaming service of my home team's broadcaster for the full baseball season.

Sorry, the value is not there. I'll listen on the radio for those games.
 
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sjsharksfan12 said:
And these games are blacked out on MLB.TV I assume. Something confuses me about MLB. They talk about the whole blackout situation, yet they sign exclusive deals with both Apple and Peacock and those games are blacked out anyway unless you get a subscription. So if you buy MLB.TV, Peacock, Apple TV, and subscribe to an internet cable package, that's a lot of money just to legally watch baseball. Seems counter productive.
Click to expand...

All anti-consumer actions are about the money. Change your lens from looking at this as a MLB consumer to the seller of MLB product trying to maximize revenue.
  • Sell a subscription to MLB.TV. Revenue for you.
  • Peacock is interesteed in some games, so sell a few to them and use blackout rules so they have an exclusive. More revenue for you.
  • AppleTV is interested in some games, so sell a few to them and use blackout rules so they have an exclusive on those games. More revenue for you.
As long as people just roll over and pay, you can keep choosing "more revenue for you" options. Maybe YouTube wants a few games? Great! More revenue for you. Maybe Hulu? Great! More revenue for you. Maybe Playstation and Xbox want some games? Great! More revenue for you. Maybe Apple wants some "be there VR" games for the new goggles? Great! More revenue for you.

All you have to do is watch for a downturn in the main package sales because people are frustrated with the blackouts to feed these extra revenue sources. If you don't see that, you can keep carving out slices of games and making more and more money.

How does this get fixed? Consumers have to vote with their wallets. If they opt to just "play ball" with these kinds of shenanigans, MLB makes more money from streaming, you earn your bonus for innovating these additional revenue streams and making more and more such deals, owners are happier with free, additional revenue streams from the same product, etc. Basically, everyone on the selling end of the transaction is happy and rewarded for making such decisions.

Flipping it back to seeing it all as a consumer: Of course it looks counter productive, if not anti-consumer. MLB.TV should buy ALL games. These other options should not have exclusives that remove games from the "all games" offer. You could even make a consumer-centric argument about ending local blackouts of all sports too. However, all of those arguments involve making less money for major league sports owners and keeping more money in consumer pockets. Why does the seller (of anything) want that?
 
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HiVolt said:
Haha, no thanks. Baseball is a regional sport now... I watched the broadcasts last year for my team the Blue Jays, and the commentary and analysis was so robotic... These people don't have a clue about the inner workings of the team as the local team broadcaster.

They expect me to pay $69 to watch 4-6 games of my team per season? That's as much as it costs me to pay for the sports streaming service of my home team's broadcaster for the full baseball season.

Sorry, the value is not there. I'll listen on the radio for those games.
Click to expand...
As much as it hurts to agree with a Jays fan, as an O's fan, I agree 100%. National baseball broadcasts are good for exposure to a wide market, but as far as actually knowing the team, they just don't and really can't be expected to.
 
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sjsharksfan12 said:
And these games are blacked out on MLB.TV I assume. Something confuses me about MLB. They talk about the whole blackout situation, yet they sign exclusive deals with both Apple and Peacock and those games are blacked out anyway unless you get a subscription. So if you buy MLB.TV, Peacock, Apple TV, and subscribe to an internet cable package, that's a lot of money just to legally watch baseball. Seems counter productive.
Click to expand...

I just don't understand blackouts at all. The NBA and MLB complain that the NFL gets all the viewers, and then they make it hard for people to watch their games. I'm not driving to my nearest major city to watch a damn baseball game and if that is my only option well then I guess they just don't care if I like baseball or not.

Oh and more on topic with regard to MLB on ATV+, the announcers are just bad. It's like they forget most of the time they're at a baseball game and then periodically say "oh yeah and now this guy wants to hit the ball too."
 
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TheYayAreaLiving 🎗 said:
It would have been nice if it was offered for FREE like last year.
Click to expand...

It was probably NOT free last year. Either Apple paid the bill and/or maybe it was like a free trial to get it established on AppleTV... like a HBO free weekend on cable/satt.

There is no "free" product that can make money. Somebody pays for it. The closest we get to truly free is free trial. If last year was that, that was a lengthy and impressive free trial period.
 
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CarAnalogy said:
I just don't understand blackouts at all. The NBA and MLB complain that the NFL gets all the viewers, and then they make it hard for people to watch their games. I'm not driving to my nearest major city to watch a damn baseball game and if that is my only option well then I guess they just don't care if I like baseball or not.

Oh and more on topic with regard to MLB on ATV+, the announcers are just bad. It's like they forget most of the time they're at a baseball game and then periodically say "oh yeah and now this guy wants to hit the ball too."
Click to expand...

If you don't want to pay for baseball, they don't care if you like it or not.

If you don't want to pay for iPhone, Apple doesn't care if you like it or not.

If you don't want to pay for electricity, your energy provider doesn't care if you like it or not.

Blackouts is a concept driven by a desire to rent seats in the stadium. It is somewhat antiquated now that TV deals yield far more revenue than ticket sales. Nevertheless, blackouts probably still work in terms of driving passionate fans to buy tickets and go see games in person. Watch any game on TV and there are butts in seats at those games.

If blackouts didn't work (meaning make more money), the leagues would probably do away with them... as non-blacked out games can still make money on advertising sales... and more money on more eyeballs watching the game.

Attend one professional sports game in America in decent seats and you probably spend more than any of the streaming "whole season" packages by the end of the game. So that is MORE revenue from you than they can get by encouraging you to NOT attend a game by removing blackouts.

All such decisions are carefully calculated ones about how to maximize revenue for their "product." If some decisions turn some people away from watching in any form, that's OK, as long as the revenue maximization is believed to be optimized.
 
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HiVolt said:
Haha, no thanks. Baseball is a regional sport now... I watched the broadcasts last year for my team the Blue Jays, and the commentary and analysis was so robotic... These people don't have a clue about the inner workings of the team as the local team broadcaster.

They expect me to pay $69 to watch 4-6 games of my team per season? That's as much as it costs me to pay for the sports streaming service of my home team's broadcaster for the full baseball season.

Sorry, the value is not there. I'll listen on the radio for those games.
Click to expand...
I liked watching Geddy Lee behind home plate at the Blue Jays games
 
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HobeSoundDarryl said:
All anti-consumer actions are about the money. Change your lens from looking at this as a MLB consumer to the seller of MLB product trying to maximize revenue.
  • Sell a subscription to MLB.TV. Revenue for you.
  • Peacock is interesteed in some games, so sell a few to them and use blackout rules so they have an exclusive. More revenue for you.
  • AppleTV is interested in some games, so sell a few to them and use blackout rules so they have an exclusive on those games. More revenue for you.
As long as people just roll over and pay, you can keep choosing "more revenue for you" options. Maybe YouTube wants a few games? Great! More revenue for you. Maybe Hulu? Great! More revenue for you. Maybe Playstation and Xbox want some games? Great! More revenue for you. Maybe Apple wants some "be there VR" games for the new goggles? Great! More revenue for you.

All you have to do is watch for a downturn in the main package sales because people are frustrated with the blackouts to feed these extra revenue sources. If you don't see that, you can keep carving out slices of games and making more and more money.

How does this get fixed? Consumers have to vote with their wallets. If they opt to just "play ball" with these kinds of shenanigans, MLB makes more money from streaming, you earn your bonus for innovating these additional revenue streams and making more and more such deals, owners are happier with free, additional revenue streams from the same product, etc. Basically, everyone on the selling end of the transaction is happy and rewarded for making such decisions.

Flipping it back to seeing it all as a consumer: Of course it looks counter productive, if not anti-consumer. MLB.TV should buy ALL games. These other options should not have exclusives that remove games from the "all games" offer. You could even make a consumer-centric argument about ending local blackouts of all sports too. However, all of those arguments involve making less money for major league sports owners and keeping more money in consumer pockets. Why does the seller (of anything) want that?
Click to expand...
How streaming was meant to be. Pay for what you want to see. Apple gets it right on this one. I am not a big fan of MLB. Why should I subsidize those who are example. Same with the channels. I turn them on and off when they meet or miss my current viewing wishes. Apple TV base price gives me a curated what’s happening and a base number of content. My choice from there. Streaming as designed. 👍
 
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