Side Note

Facebook is pivoting to baseball

Facebook has been granted the exclusive streaming rights to 25 Major League Baseball games in the 2018 regular season. According to a report by Bloomberg, all of the games will occur on weekday afternoons — with most taking place on Wednesdays — and will be available to viewers through Facebook’s video streaming platform, Facebook Watch.

Though these time slots are far from primetime, the deal still marks a major milestone for the company, which has been slowly but surely growing its collection of popular television and live events since the rollout of Facebook Watch last August. While other social media companies, such as Twitter, have announced similar partnerships with major sporting events in the past, Facebook’s MLB deal is the first to obtain the exclusive distribution rights to regular season games. A move which only furthers the extent of the company’s encroachment upon the territories of traditional TV giants.