In the latest sports business news, it has been announced that Facebook will be streaming 25 Major League Baseball games this upcoming season. The first game of the year available to watch will be Phillies vs. Mets, on April 4th. While streaming professional sports on popular websites has been done in recent years, this is the first major deal that MLB has struck after streaming a handful of games on Friday’s last year. Facebook was also the website of choice last season for America’s Pastime.
This marks a fairly large advancement for streaming sports considering social media sites are not that familiar with doing business like this. In 2016, the NFL had struck up a deal with Twitter to stream 10 of their not so popular Thursday Night Football games. Last season the NFL also had a streaming agreement with Amazon that cost them a cool $50 million. Shortly after the deal between MLB and Facebook was announced, Twitter stated that they entered into a three-year deal with Major League Soccer to steam games as well. The financials on the latest deal between MLB and Facebook have not been disclosed to the public just yet.
In the grand scheme of things, this should cause Facebook’s (FB) stock to rise as it has been doing fairly consistently over the past year. Currently sitting at $185.23, Facebook’s stock was sitting right around $138 at this time last year. One would have to imagine that there would be some gains to be had from streaming one of the more popular sports in America, as well as around the world.
