MLB Playoffs Look To Build On 2025 Regular Season TV Successes
While the calendar year started with negative headlines around Major League Baseball and TV, quite a bit has changed since then.
MLB is finalizing tweaks to its media rights that see NBC take over much of ESPN’s former slate, while ESPN supercharges local baseball rights and Netflix gets involved as well. Across both national and local broadcasts this season, TV tune-in was up.
And despite big-market teams finding on-field success once more in 2025, the league will also trot out a playoff field that’s rich with parity as well. The New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs all play wildcard round games this week, while less glamorous squads like the Toronto Blue Jays and Milwaukee Brewers received first-round byes.
Last year saw similar dynamics, yet ended with a dream World Series for MLB and network partners: A bicoastal matchup between the mighty Dodgers and Yankees, right on the heels of an NLCS between the Dodgers and Mets.
A Yankees/Dodgers rematch is very much still on the board this time around. And any amalgamation of the Dodgers or Cubs vs. the Yankees or Red Sox would draw in national intrigue on a level that sees the league build on a three-year run of TV success.
That’s the good news. Now comes the harder part for MLB: Having that actually happen again, while the more likely outcome based on seeding is a matchup of narratively interesting teams with limited limited appeal outside of local markets.
According to ESPN Bet’s listed odds today, the Phillies (limited popularity beyond the region) are your most likely champ, followed by the Dodgers, Mariners and Blue Jays.
Toronto is a big market in terms of population, but not when it comes to U.S. TV audiences — something that ESPN dealt with when the Raptors faced the Warriors in the 2019 NBA Finals, and the last two Stanley Cups (featuring the Edmonton Oilers) have also contended with.
The Blue Jays are a fun story for baseball fans since they were a surprise this year and haven’t been to the World Series since winning in 1993. But the Jays don’t have a local U.S. audience to draw upon.
There’s a case to be made that the Mariners, Brewers, Padres, Tigers, Reds and Guardians have similar TV concerns to one degree or another — interesting stories (none have won a championship in the last 34 years and the first three have never won a title at all) that lack the national juice to potentially draw in casual viewership beyond the immediate areas.
Another possibility: The Dodgers and Mariners meet in a World Series that’s narratively rich but a disaster in terms of logistics with two West Coast teams that need later (ET) starts and a real possibility that interest gets gated off to Pacific Time markets. The same could be said about Phillies/Yankees or Phillies/Red Sox in the East. Or a Brewers/Tigers matchup in CT.
That part isn’t new, either, in baseball’s 12-team format that invites more parity and a wider range of outcomes. For every Dodgers/Yankees dream scenario, there’s also the chance you land on Rangers/Diamondbacks (as the 2023 World Series did, to limited import beyond the Southwest).
We’ll know a lot about how things shake out already by Thursday night this week.
The Yankees and Red Sox playing in the wildcard round means one won’t make it to the weekend. And there’s a chance that both the Dodgers and Cubs are out, too (admittedly, would be a major upset for L.A. to lose to the Reds, however).
After such a strong TV showing all year, though, it would be interesting to see if MLB can successfully thread the needle this fall by maximizing invested fan bases, still getting large-market draws and pairing playoff TV wins with a finalized new deal to close out the 2026-28 window.
