Roughly one week into the 2018 Major League Baseball season, Twitter has announced a renewed deal with the league to livestream a game per week on its social media platform.
The new deal is a continuation of Twitter’s previous agreement with MLB, which last year included a game per week in addition to an original three-hour program featuring highlights and look-ins for MLB teams.
The MLB on Twitter will kick off this season on April 5 with out-of-market streaming of the Texas Rangers against the Oakland Athletics.
All the weekly games will be available to Twitter users in the United States. Each game will be simulcast of a participating team’s local television broadcast and Twitter sell advertising packages to sponsors.
Twitter’s deal with the MLB also includes real-time game highlights across the platform and special hashtag emojis for each MLB team.
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Twitter’s renewed MLB deal arrives shortly after social media rival Facebook announced its own agreement with the league.
This year, Facebook is promising a 25-game package of weekday MLB contests.
The games will be exclusive to Facebook Watch and will be distributed globally through the MLB Live show page. The games will be available across devices including mobile phones and connected TVs and will offer viewers some interactivity options.
MLB Network said it will introduce new “in-game production elements specially designed for intuitively watching, sharing and interacting on Facebook.” More information about broadcast talent and social integrations is forthcoming.
In addition to streaming deals with Facebook and Twitter, a large number of MLB games will be available through ESPN’s upcoming subscription streaming service, ESPN+.