As the Major League Baseball season started on Thursday afternoon, the MLB.TV streaming service has been reported as experiencing apparent outages for users across the country. Baseball fans aiming to tune in and watch their favorite team strive for their first win of the new campaign were unsuccessful in their efforts, displaying an era reading, “We had some trouble loading the game, please try again later.” The occurrence takes place as local broadcasts for 27 of the 30 MLB teams are available through direct-to-consumer services.
DownDetector, which tracks outages across websites and mobile services around the world, experienced a spike in reports surrounding outages for MLB.TV. The service registered more than 22,000 reports at 4:00 p.m. EST hour, which coincides with the start time for several of the Opening Day games airing on regional sports networks.
The service currently charges $149.99 per year for access to all teams throughout the year, along with MLB Network throughout the 2025 season and offseason. MLB Commissioner Robert D. Manfred Jr. has expressed a desire to refine the league’s media rights strategy when its national deals with FOX Sports and Warner Bros. Discovery expire in 2028. The league and ESPN agreed to a mutual opt-out of its national contract following the 2025 season, a deal for which the network reportedly pays $550 million per year.
The MLB.TV video service first launched in August 2002 and has been a resource for baseball fans looking to view out-of-market games for teams around the sport. The platform set a new record last season of 14.5 billion minutes watched, which was up 14% compared to the previous year. In addition to this media platform, the league is also producing and disseminating game broadcasts for the Arizona Diamondbacks, Cleveland Guardians, Colorado Rockies, Minnesota Twins and San Diego Padres.
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