Netflix Blends Tradition With Disruption

In describing the platform’s live sports strategy, Netflix vice president Gabe Spitzer has leaned on a decidedly disruptive adjective: the platform wants to present sports “in an eventized way,” he told Sports Business Journal.

Opening Night was among the handful of special MLB events that Netflix acquired the exclusive rights to broadcast this season. Fans will have to subscribe to the platform to enjoy the Home Run Derby in July and the Field of Dreams Game in August as well.

But in many ways, Netflix embraced some of the traditional sports broadcasting features that are popular on platforms like NBC, FOX and ESPN.

“From first pitch to last out, we’re covering a baseball game. And nobody's gonna try to reinvent the wheel,” Opening Night play-by-play commentator Matt Vasgersian told Forbes on the eve of the broadcast. “The Netflix touches are going to come kind of around the edges.”

In a major victory over more traditional rivals at their own game, Netflix secured the perspective of all-time home run leader Barry Bonds for the pregame and postgame analyst desk, which marked a significant coup as the infamous slugger has eluded interested baseball broadcasters for years.

But the streaming giant also attempted to differentiate its MLB showcase from what audiences might be used to. It integrated a decapitated hand from its Addams Family spinoff show “Wednesday.” It temporarily removed the on-screen scorebug during an in-game interview with Yankees infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr. And New York Giants quarterback Jameis Winston threw hotdogs to fans in his capacity as a broadcast “special guest.”

“Typically, on broadcasts, on productions, it’s like, you only see the players and you see the athletes and you see the coaches. But with this engagement, fans are gonna feel seen,” Winston said of his role on Opening Night. “And everyone wants to feel seen and heard, right?”

As far as the game itself went, it might not have been as dramatic as some of Netflix’s scripted offerings, ending in a 7-0 shutout for the Yankees. Superstar slugger Aaron Judge earned a “golden sombrero” with four strikeouts. Giants All-Star Logan Webb struggled on the mound.

It also featured the first-ever automated ball-strike system (ABS) challenge, with Yankees shortstop Jose Caballero unsuccessfully challenging a strike call in the fourth inning.

But the mix of live spectacle and traditional analysis, which included perspectives from revered former players in Bonds, Albert Pujols, Anthony Rizzo, Hunter Pence and CC Sabathia, was meant to serve convicted baseball fans while also piquing the interest of more casual viewers.

“As baseball fans, we’re purists to the core,” said MLB Network’s Lauren Shehadi, who served as the sideline reporter for the game. “And we have fans, baseball fans, who want to consume the game in its purist form. They also want to be entertained. And that’s why I feel like this is perfect… There’s an entertaining component to it, there’s a thrill to it, there’s engaging a younger audience to it. And I think that that's always been the goal of baseball, right? To get your target audience as broad as it possibly can.”

And, of course, Netflix would like to remind sports leagues and other partners that its reach is significant. While FOX celebrated a historic World Baseball Classic telecast that reached some 10.78 million viewers earlier this month, Netflix events can reach more than 300 million global subscribers.

The platform broadcasted Opening Night in English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Portuguese. When it “eventized” a National Football League game between the Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings on Christmas Day last year, it averaged 27.5 million viewers in the U.S.

On the other hand, by selling exclusive rights to the high-profile game, MLB also alienates some local fans. As every major sports league increasingly divides up their exclusive matchups and events among a growing number of traditional broadcasters and streaming platforms, it’s possible that the returns will start to diminish and that fans will increasingly refuse to follow the product from subscription to subscription.

But even though it poses a challenge for fans, the carving up of sports broadcasts isn’t going to diminish anytime soon. The Opening Night broadcast was just the first result of a three-year bet by MLB that Netflix can leverage some of the sport’s most popular events into a brighter future.

And for baseball specifically, making that bet with such a relatively small number of games is a strong hedge.

“I get it, I feel for them,” Vasgersian said of fans who are frustrated by exclusive broadcasts. “I mean, there’s 161 more (regular season games for each team). I don’t want to say that flippantly … but we’re going to be good too and we’re going to do something different.”

MLB Resets Broadcast Landscape Amid Turmoil

MLB’s partnership with Netflix was announced in the wake of some turmoil between baseball and the world’s most prolific sports network.

Last year, ESPN informed MLB that it was opting out of the final three years of their national television deal, which was set to cost the network some $550 million each year moving forward, according to The Athletic.

In the wake of that decision, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred sent a memo to team owners noting that he was not happy with the “minimal coverage” that their product had been receiving on ESPN. Then he repackaged the newly available inventory of Sunday night games, playoff matchups and special events and parceled it out to a group of new broadcasters.

Shortly after news of the ESPN breakup surfaced, Manfred struck deals with Netflix and NBCUniversal while maintaining existing partnerships with Apple TV, the Roku Channel, FOX and TBS. ESPN also agreed to purchase a new package of MLB broadcasts.

Notably, the reset brought all of MLB’s broadcast partnerships under three-year contracts, giving Manfred future flexibility. And, in the meantime, according to ESPN News Services, ESPN will still be paying $550 million per year, while NBCUniversal pays $200 million to take over Sunday Night Baseball, Sunday Leadoff and a playoff series.

And Netflix is now paying $50 million to show live baseball event coverage to the world’s largest set of streaming subscribers for the first time this season.

All told, Manfred secured a $800 million total that includes some new emphasis on three of the sport’s most popular events from the world’s largest streamer. Netflix’s Opening Night broadcast sought to showcase what newly “eventized” versions of baseball traditions can look like. And while so much of the future of sports’ biggest revenue driver is uncertain, baseball’s big streaming debut was just the start.