Peacock Sunday Morning Baseball: Everything You Need to Know

Peacock Sunday Morning Baseball will return for the 2023 MLB season, here is what you need to know to tune in.

Soon after Apple’s announcement of a Friday Night Baseball doubleheader last year, NBC Universal’s streaming service, Peacock, confirmed rumors that it was jumping into the MLB streaming fray as well with its own exclusive games on Sunday Mornings starting on May 8th of the 2022 season.

The bottom line for MLB fans with Sunday Morning Baseball for the 2023 season is this:

• Peacock Exclusive. Sunday Morning Baseball is a “streaming exclusive” series, meaning you can only watch the games on Peacock. The Sunday Morning games will result in blackouts for the regional sports networks that usually carry the featured teams, and you can’t watch the games on NBC.
• Requires a Paid Subscription. In order to watch the Sunday Morning games, a paid subscription to Peacock Premium is required. Peacock doesn’t offer any of its live sports programming, such as Premier League or Notre Dame football, in the free tier.

See also: Why MLB blackouts will continue to rise

Apple vs. Peacock: who got the better MLB streaming deal?

Some believe that Peacock’s MLB deal is more attractive than Apple’s. Why?

Peacock paid less

First, Peacock paid a reported 35 million for their MLB exclusives, whereas Apple is rumored to have paid 85 million. So, the first win for Peacock was their ability to secure a coveted weekly MLB game at considerable savings. Yes, they have fewer games than Apple, but the meat of the MLB action doesn’t heat up until later in summer anyway. The 2021 World Series Champion Braves had a losing record last season through the first third of their schedule. Not bidding on early season games with low engagement, and instead focusing on parts of the schedule that have more eyeballs on them, could be a brilliant move by Peacock executives.

Peacock has a favorable time slot

The Peacock Sunday morning games, which start at 11:30 AM EST, and then at noon as the season progresses, will be the only MLB game on at that time for the first two hours of each game. The next Sunday game won’t begin until 1:30-2 on the east coast. This means that the Peacock deal is not only platform exclusive (you can only watch on Peacock), but also time exclusive (this is the only option for MLB at this time slot).

Apple’s games competes with RSNs

By contrast, Apple’s Friday night game will be competing with regional sports networks all over the country. While you can stream Apple’s Friday Night Baseball nationwide, the fans in the local markets that get hit by a blackout on their usual RSN are going to be the most interested in the Apple game. In this way, the Apple game, even though it was more expensive by tens of millions of dollars, functions more as a regional broadcast and Peacock’s games as more of a national broadcast.

See also: How to watch nationally televised MLB games

Peacock’s deal aligns with their news brand

While it’s true that Peacock fans will still have their RSN blacked out to enforce Peacock’s TV contract, the fact that the Peacock game is on at a time when fans don’t expect to get to watch baseball may soften that blow and leave MLB fans open minded to trying out this Sunday morning baseball thing. After all, many consumers already associate the NBC brand with Sunday Mornings due to the iconic new show, Meet the Press.

Peacock offers a better sports lineup. Last, Apple is new to sports, but Peacock has a respectable sports lineup and people already come to the app to live stream sporting events. My sense is that new subscribers are more likely to stick around if there are other sports they can watch on the platform. Adding more sports, perhaps a Big Ten Football game, would provide more value for Apple TV+ sports fans and may actually help to safeguard their investment in MLB.

Peacock 2022 MLB streaming schedule + RSN blackout list

In the easy to use table below, we list not only the 2022 MLB Peacock schedule, but also the regional sports networks that will be blacked out when that station’s local team appears in the game.

For example, Yankees fans won’t be able to stream the Peacock Sunday Morning game on the YES Network as NBC negotiated an exclusive deal. As I touched on above, the whole point of these exclusive games is to use the draw of live sports to attract new subscribers to these platforms. The question for the media executives spearheading these deals is how valuable are new users who arrive at your platform annoyed that their usual channel is blacked out? Will they sign up and stay, or take advantage of a free trial to watch their team and then cancel the next week?

Only time will tell.

Peacock Sunday Morning Baseball FAQ