Social media platform Facebook has struck its latest live sports deal through an agreement with Major League Baseball to show 20 of its games during the ongoing 2017 season.
Facebook will live stream one game per week on Fridays in the US, beginning with today’s encounter between the Cincinnati Reds and Colorado Rockies.
The Associated Press news agency said Facebook’s package of 20 games will use the broadcast feed of one of the involved teams.
Rival social media platform Twitter has an existing deal under which weekly live streams of out-of-market MLB games are available free to logged-in and logged-out Twitter users in the US. This weekly stream on Fridays, which started on April 7, will now be moved to Tuesdays.
“Baseball games are uniquely engaging community experiences, as the chatter and rituals in the stands are often as meaningful to fans as the action on the diamond,” Dan Reed, Facebook’s head of global sports partnerships, said in a statement.
“By distributing a live game per week on Facebook, Major League Baseball can re-imagine this social experience on a national scale.”