US pay-television provider Dish Network has agreed a multi-year extension to its carriage deal with Major League Baseball in an expanded partnership that paves the way for in-market streaming of MLB games in the future.
Dish and MLB Network have renewed terms for continued carriage of the league’s pay-television platform and its MLB Network Strike Zone service, including digital rights for those channels on DishAnywhere.com and via the Dish Anywhere app.
The new contract includes the launch of out-of-market package MLB Extra Innings on Dish, including authenticated access to the live streaming service, MLB.tv.
MLB said the agreement provides a path for consumers to have authenticated access to stream live in-market games on digital properties from the league, local programmers and pay-television providers.
The league added that in-market live streaming would require additional agreements between the parties including Dish, MLB Advanced Media and programmers with local television rights of MLB games.