NBCUniversal’s deal with Major League Baseball to show the Sunday Leadoff live games package on Peacock expired last season, and Roku is in the race to take it over, according to a Wall Street Journal reporter.
Asked to confirm or comment on this, a Roku rep told Next TV, “We have nothing to share at this time.”
Some baseball media news: Roku has emerged as a suitor for the Sunday morning streaming package of games known as "Sunday Leadoff." NBCU's Peacock had the package for last two seasons but their deal expired and as yet there is no new home for the small package of games.April 23, 2024
Peacock carried Sunday Leadoff for the last two seasons, paying a reported $30 million each year (paltry, by live sports standards), exclusively televising 18 live MLB games at either 11:30 a.m. or noontime ET.
Just shy of a month into the 2024 MLB campaign, NBCU hasn’t reached an agreement to renew the package.
Roku ended 2023 with 80 million active accounts, but the Roku Channel FAST is widely distributed beyond the Roku platform, with the app also available on popular rival TVOS device systems including Amazon Fire TV and Google TV/Android TV. Roku Channel is also accessible via the open internet.
According to Nielsen, Roku Channel accounted for 1.3% of all U.S. traditional TV viewing (i.e. watching not on computers or mobile devices) in March. That's the same level of market share that Peacock pulled in last month.
The Roku Sunday Leadoff report comes amid a push by the larger FASTs to get into the live sports business. On Wednesday morning, for example, Fox announced that it is bringing live MMA and women’s soccer to Tubi via a new arrangement with DAZN.
