Twitter To Air Weekly MLB Games In Renewed Streaming Pact

Twitter today renewed its streaming partnership with Major League Baseball.(MLB). Live streams of weekly games this season will air beginning April 5, when the Texas Rangers face off against the Oakland Athletics.

Additional out-of-market games will stream weekly on Twitter for the remainder of the season, the social network announced in a blog post. Games will be available in the U.S. to viewers with or without Twitter accounts as simulcasts of one participating team’s local TV broadcast. Twitter will vend ad packages for prospective sponsors. As part of the deal, the MLB will also share real-time highlights via its Twitter account, and in Spanish on its Las Mayores account. Additionally, hashtag-triggered emojis will be available for all 30 teams in the league throughout the course of the season.

Twitter first partnered with the MLB in 2016 to stream weekly games. At the time, as part of a greater sports push, the company said it would also stream weekly National Hockey League (NHL) matches.

Twitter isn’t the only social network to have struck a deal with MLB. Last month, rival Facebook announced its own exclusive deal to stream 25 afternoon MLB games, beginning tomorrow. And YouTube TV, YouTube‘s live cable service, was the presenting sponsor of the 2017 World Series. Last month, YouTube TV signed on to serve as the presenting sponsor for the 2018 and 2019 World Series as well.