The 2026 MLB season is just around the corner, and you know what that means: It’s time to catch up on how the league has once again changed the way you’ll be watching 162 games of your favorite team, plus playoffs and special events.
Have no fear because Yahoo Sports is here to walk you through what’s ultimately a very simple process. It just breaks down into 16 steps across seven streaming platforms.
To be clear, we are going to be trying to sign up for every service you’d need to watch every MLB game and major event this year, and we’re assuming you’re approaching this without a subscription to any of them or a cable provider.
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Step 1: Let’s figure out in-market viewing
Your first step is probably going to be to try to watch the home team. How that works depends on where you live and how much watching that team means to you. Ponder that, and let’s move on.
Step 2: Sign up for a cable subscription, if that’s your thing
This is several steps in itself, but we’re just saying that the best way to watch your local team is still probably by signing up for a cable bundle or something similar that offers you a slate of sports channels.
Step 3: Sign up for an in-market streaming service, if that’s your thing
If you’d rather stream the games, in-market streaming has become the norm in MLB, so you can likely sign up for something in that realm with your team.
Step 4: Let’s go to MLB.TV
If you had MLB.TV last season, you can skip this step (for now). Just renew your subscription as you normally would. You also probably don’t need this if you shelled out for MLB Extra Innings with your cable or satellite provider.
But if you’re new to MLB.TV, our next step will be to go MLB’s streaming page, which will then send you to ESPN Unlimited, the new, $30-per-month, direct-to-consumer streaming service that will be the home of MLB.TV — the platform through which fans have watched out-of-market games for years.
Step 5: Create a MyDisney account
As with all Disney streaming products, you’re going to need a login with the Mouse if you want to sign up for ESPN Unlimited, in order to sign up for MLB.TV. So go ahead and create an account there.
Step 6: Sign up for ESPN Unlimited
OK, so $30 per month might sound like a lot of money just to have the ability to pay even more money to watch baseball games. Fortunately, MLB and ESPN have offered a buffer for this year.
Go ahead and sign up for ESPN Unlimited, which will give you the first month free. You can also get ESPN Unlimited through your cable or satellite provider, so definitely check if that’s an option for you.
Step 7: Sign up for MLB.TV
Our next step is to sign up for MLB’s actual subscription service, which will run you $150 for the season or $30 per month.
Step 8: Cancel ESPN Unlimited
The good news is you don’t actually have to pay for ESPN Unlimited all season to use MLB.TV — this year, at least. If you cancel ESPN Unlimited during your one-month free trial, you will continue to have access to MLB.TV for the remainder of the season.
Next year, however, ESPN and MLB might not be so kind, as returning MLB.TV subscribers won’t be able to go through the league’s platform to renew, and the free month of ESPN Unlimited might no longer be available.
Step 9: Find a way to maintain access to ESPN
If you don’t want to spend $30 per month on ESPN Unlimited, you’ll still need to maintain access to ESPN if you want to watch every baseball game. That’s because while ESPN no longer has “Sunday Night Baseball,” the network does have a seemingly random selection of MLB games, many of them TBD, to air this season, as well as the Little League Classic and the second-half opener.
ESPN Select, formerly known as ESPN+, won’t cut it to watch baseball on ESPN. So you might need to keep ESPN Unlimited after all.
Step 10: Sign up for Peacock
The new home of “Sunday Night Baseball” is NBC. If you want to watch all of the games that NBC will broadcast, you will need its Peacock streaming service to watch not just SNB but also the new “MLB Sunday Leadoff” package previously featured on Roku.
So go to Peacock and get ready to pay either $8 per month or $80 per year so you can have full access to MLB on most Sundays. NBC and/or Peacock will also be the home of the entire wild-card round, the MLB Draft, the Futures Game and some primetime games (such as the Los Angeles Dodgers’ opener on Thursday).
Step 11: Sign up for Netflix
Netflix has also entered the MLB arena with a deal for the Opening Night game between the New York Yankees and San Francisco Giants on Wednesday, the Home Run Derby on July 13 and the Field of Dreams game between the Philadelphia Phillies and Minnesota Twins on Aug. 13.
Those are three events that, quite conveniently for Netflix, fall at least a month apart. To watch all three, you’ll have to pay $8 (with ads) per month for at least three months.
Step 12: Figure out your Fox options
Fox and Fox Sports 1 remain the home of the World Series, the MLB All-Star Game, half of the games in the Division and Championship Series, and the “Baseball Night in America” games on Saturdays.
If you signed up for a cable subscription, you should be fine here. If you didn’t, you might need to sign up for Fox One, which will run you $20 per month. Fox games are also available by over-the-air antenna if you have that, while Fox Sports 1 games are usually non-exclusive.
Step 13: Figure out your TBS options
Want to watch the other half of the Division and Championship Series games, plus the TBS “MLB Tuesday” games? Again, a cable subscription will cover the TBS slate, but otherwise, you’re going to need HBO Max, which costs $11 per month with ads.
Step 14: Sign up for Apple TV
OK, here’s our last stop. Apple TV is where you must go to watch “Friday Night Baseball.” Sign up for that, too, for $13 per month.
Step 15: Think about what you’ve done
Let’s add all of this up (and hopefully by now you’ve realized we are dealing heavily in satire).
If we try to calculate all the streaming services a person would need to watch any out-of-market game without a cable subscription — namely MLB.TV, ESPN Unlimited, Peacock, Netflix, Fox One, HBO Max and Apple TV — we’re talking about a group of streaming services that add up to $120 per month when not factoring in free trials or annual plans.
Heck, you can add Amazon Prime to that list, too, if you’re a New York Yankees fan inside the team’s footprint, as they have a package of 21 games available only on Prime Video locally.
Step 16: Ponder where all of this is going
Does any of this sound pleasant to you? Does any of this sound fan-friendly? The cord-cutting trend seems to have reached its natural conclusion, as the full assortment of MLB games is now available to either cable subscribers with a few streaming subscriptions or people with a collection of streaming subscriptions that perhaps cost even more than a cable subscription.
The transactions here are at least understandable. In a world of increasingly fragmented entertainment options, in which streaming services are attempting to juice subscriber counts by any means possible, sports have become an attractive option. And MLB has decided to fill its dance card more than any other league in the industry.
Sure, Netflix might be getting only a few events here and there. And Peacock’s “MLB Sunday Leadoff” slate is likely to be relatively light on must-see games. But if they get you to sign up for even one month to watch a particular game they acquired at a cut rate, when compared to the Fox and TBS packages, they’ve won. It’s all likely good business for MLB, which is doing its best to navigate the ongoing destruction of its previous television business model, the regional sports network.
It’s just once again at the cost of fans, who are about to spend a season relearning how to watch their sport.
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