MLB Opening Day Debacle: What Went Wrong and Why?
Baseball has been America’s pastime for over a century, but you wouldn’t know it with the way MLB orchestrated this year’s Opening Day. The landmark that traditionally transitions fans from winter to spring once offered non-stop coverage from 10am to midnight. Not this year. Thank you very much, Rob Manfred. A tentpole event like Opening Day should dominate the sports news cycle, but that wasn’t the case this year.
The first televised games didn’t start until mid-afternoon, and ESPN’s offerings elicited little more than a few yawns. A Yankees-Brewers match followed by a Dodgers-Tigers tilt won’t draw much of a national audience. Perhaps that’s a little revenge on the part of the network after Manfred terminated ESPN’s broadcasting deal, effective at the end of this season. Baseball will be absent on ESPN until Sunday night’s contest between the Braves and Padres. Three games in four days without a nightly version of Baseball Tonight represents one hell of an opening weekend dud.
Further, Manfred felt the league could compete with the NCAA tournament, which hosted the opening round of its Sweet Sixteen games for yesterday and today. That’s a spectacular mistake that could have been avoided by starting the season one day earlier, with Thursday as the scheduled makeup day. Also, if you’re going head-to-head with March Madness, offer some compelling games to start the season. There were no rivalry games, and the most intriguing match featuring the Cubs and Diamondbacks started at 9:10pm CT.
That game wasn’t televised nationally because of ESPN’s contract with the NHL. Fans looking for baseball were treated to the Kings-Avalanche game instead. Yes, the hockey game has playoff implications, and also yes, few sports fans outside of Los Angeles and Denver care.
We pay $150 to get a non-functional @MLBTV app on #OpeningDay
And they wonder why baseball isn't the "national pastime" anymore. #LFGM pic.twitter.com/DjW5dsflH0
— Fantasy Buddha (@FantasyBuddha) March 27, 2025
To make matters worse, users watching on the MLB TV subscription-based app suffered through several streaming issues. Many viewers experienced a “Network Error” message on their screens that coincided with the day’s first slate of games. The accompanying photo of a dejected Clayton Kershaw was a nice touch, however. Those without streaming options had nothing but highlights and commentary of the afternoon games via the MLB Network. Something is amiss if Harold Reynolds, Kevin Millar, and Dan Plesac are the best the league can offer its viewers at the commencement of its regular season schedule.
Baseball’s biggest issue, however, may have been the 2025 season-opening series in Tokyo between the Dodgers and Cubs. The response was phenomenal and the television audience was massive. The flip side is that it made the American version of Opening Day somewhat anti-climatic. I understand the appeal of globalizing the sport, but that series would have drawn record numbers in mid-July, too. Scheduling the series as an exhibition showcase wouldn’t have hurt its viewing audience, either, and still would have provided an equal amount of goodwill.
Manfred has made some puzzling decisions during his tenure, but to his credit, most have worked out well. The extra-innings ghost runner no longer irritates the fan base, and the pitch clock has been a revelation. He erred on Thursday, however. Opening Day used to feel like a national holiday, but Major League Baseball robbed us of that yesterday.
