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Executive Editor, Macworld
Fans will be able to watch free alternative broadcasts of two upcoming Friday Night Baseball games—but only the first two innings.
It’s no secret that sports fans hate streaming. What used to be a consistent place to watch your local team play every night is now spread across several platforms, including Peacock, Netflix, Amazon, and Apple TV. It seems like every night, social media lights up with baseball fans who either can’t find or don’t want to pay to watch one of the two games being broadcast on some streaming service.
Apple seemingly understands at least one of these frustrations. Variety reports that Apple has inked a deal with Yahoo Sports to stream a pair of Friday Night Baseball games— Detroit Tigers at Cleveland Guardians on September 4, and Philadelphia Phillies at New York Mets on September 18—for free on Yahoo’s site and apps.
The only problem is that Yahoo is only airing the first two innings of each game. So if you’re a fan of the New York Mets and you excitedly stumble across the game and start watching, you’ll get cut off after about a half-hour of action. And as anyone who watches baseball will tell you, the first two innings are generally not the most exciting.
The truncated games will also have their own announcers, Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman, hosts of Yahoo Sports’ “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast.
As part of the deal, Yahoo Sports will promote Apple TV’s Friday Night Baseball broadcasts through on-site ads, emails, social promotion, how-to-watch articles, “Daily Draw” games, and more, according to Variety. The deal also includes two MLS games featuring Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami CF squad, though those matches will be shown in their entirety.
