Since taking over as the commissioner of Major League Baseball in 2014, Rob Manfred has looked for ways to improve the sport, both on and off the field.
Manfred has helped bring progress to the replay system and pace of play, in addition to changes to the disabled list and contracts (qualifying offers). During the end-of-quarter MLB owners meeting, Manfred announced a new initiative.
For the first time, MLB games will be streamed on Facebook, beginning Friday, via Maury Brown of Forbes:
The deal will see a national game streamed via MLB’s Facebook page each Friday beginning with tomorrow’s (Friday. May 19th) game between the Rockies at Reds at 7:10pm ET.
MLB’s Facebook page will stream 20 total games on Fridays throughout the course of the 2017 season. Which matchups will be streamed will be announced at a later date. A notable detail is games will not be subject to local blackout.
With MLB set to utilize Facebook, it will require the league to select another day to stream games on Twitter.
In 2011, they struck a programming agreement with Facebook to stream Spring Training games by embedding the MLB.TV video player on the Facebook pages of participating teams.
Most recently, the Chicago Cubs World Series ring ceremony and when the Los Angeles Dodgers inducted Vin Scully into the Ring of Honor were both streamed on Facebook.
