How MLB can make baseball relevant on a fast-changing internet

The Verge · Mar 1, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the contemporary attention economy, follow Mia Sato. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.How it started“KING BASEBALL, monarch of the American sport world, is sick,” a New York Times story on the disappearance of amateur and small town sandlots begins. Hundreds of thousands of fans attended the opening games of the season, and star players are making bank in huge stadiums. “Nevertheless the critics say that his Royal Highness is indisposed.”The story is from 1925. But it reads like it could have been published a hundred years later.“Baseball is dying” is a perennial claim that feels like (literally) old news — but by the numbers there’s truth to it. World Series viewership is far from its peak decades ago. Attendance at ballparks hasn’t yet matched 2007 numbers. Even with viewership and attendance on the upswing, baseball is dwarfed by football, both in sheer audience numbers and in the American imagination. A few years ago, recognizing that games were dragging on and on to their detriment, MLB implemented a pitch clock to speed things up; this season, the league will have an automated system calling balls and strikes, dubbed “robot umps,” at home plate when a player challenges the human umpire’s call.But MLB is going into the 2026 season with real momentum — the 2025 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays was a certified hit. The final game of the series was the most-watched World Series game in eight years in the US, and it broke international viewership records. The enthusiasm spilled into social media: Bluesky later reported that on the day of Game 7, at least 3 percent of all posts on the platform were about baseball. TikTok and MLB jointly have said that baseball is “one of the fastest-growing sports communities” on the platform. The league said that its own social media accounts across platforms like Facebook, X, and Instagram had record views and engagement during the series.Even with a pitch clock and automated ball and strike challenges, baseball is a slow, routine game. Teams play every day, and there’s no big event with a Bad Bunny performance to bookend the season. Some have complained that MLB is bad at marketing its stars, failing to make them into household names (when MLB rolled out a program providing players with social content in 2019, even some players said it felt late).Can MLB turn the hard-won attention into something sustainable?How it’s goingSpring training just kicked off, and with it, a flurry of announcements — mostly notably that MLB was partnering with TikTok to bring more baseball-related content and features to the platform. The idea is that TikTok would be a “second screen” for baseball fans to follow along or watch highlights of games.The most interesting thing to me is a shift in social media strategy for MLB. As part of the TikTok partnership, MLB is giving some content creators access to the league’s archives, presumably so it’s easier for people to make breakdowns, fan edits, or whatever else without getting copyright strikes or scrounging for footage. Back in the fall after the World Series, I wrote that if MLB really wants to speak directly to new potential fans, they should just hand over the keys to the creators already making fandom-focused baseball content (Lionsgate did this while promoting its movies last year). We’re not quite at that point yet, but this feels like a step in that direction.For the last few years, MLB clearly has been using online fandom tactics to build buzz and juice engagement on social. Some of MLB’s own social content feels indistinguishable from what a fan account might post — and the league and teams are making the most of the unfettered access they have to players.“I’m passing the phone to Big Dumper,” a slightly distressed-looking Shohei Ohtani, pitcher and designated hitter on the Dodgers, says in a recent clip shared to MLB’s Instagram account (more on Big Dumper aka Cal Raleigh here). The San Diego Padres made players pose for photos based on Lin-Manuel Miranda memes. There’s a running joke about the admins (read: social media teams) running various team and league accounts: here’s MLB posting from Blackpink and Jonas Brothers concerts, the Chicago Cubs account posting from the crowd at a game, and the Detroit Tigers account asking players what they got for the admin’s birthday.The MLB also realized that fan content pointing back to its players, games, and teams is undeniably helpful even if the league itself didn’t have control over it. Gone are the days of hitting Jomboy with copyright claims — last summer, MLB announced it had acquired a minority stake in Jimmy (“Jomboy”) O’Brien’s media company that pumps out viral breakdowns of game moments and other content.“We are looking forward to bringing baseball fans more entertaining content to help further expand baseball’s online presence and deeper the connection between our sport and its fans,” the league said at the time. Well, yes!Individual players like Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts are also trying to expand their reach to new audiences — Betts hosts his own podcast, called On Base, where he interviews other players. Betts’ attempts to market himself to younger crowds has been at times sloppy, to say the least, like when he joined manosphere-adjacent right wing streamer Adin Ross (you may recognize the name: Ross also hosted the Los Angeles Rams’ Puka Nacua, an appearance Nacua eventually apologized for). It’s a move that speaks to how thirsty people (even millionaire pro athletes) are for a slice of the online audience.What happens nextThe World Baseball Classic — where professional players play for their home countries — starts next week, the first time since 2023 the event is being held. The last series’ USA vs. Japan game broke viewership numbers, but we’ll see if interest has grown since then, now that Shohei Ohtani is two-time World Series champ.Another thing to watch: special themed nights at ballparks, and I’m not just talking about player bobbleheads. A personal favorite is the Hello Kitty nights that teams do (including exclusive Hello Kitty baseball merch). For the last two years, the Dodgers dedicated a game to vtubers — virtual streamers played by humans behind the scenes — in an effort to tap into other fandoms and collectors and create hype. A One Piece trading card given out at a special themed Dodgers game last summer sold for $14,999.99.The thing about relying on social media to reach people is that it’s cheap for the audience — it costs nothing for a potential fan to watch players goof off or be subjected to viral TikTok trends. It’s much more expensive to subscribe to a bunch of streaming platforms to watch actual games, and even pricier to attend in person. The metrics for the World Series last year are a bright spot for MLB, but it can’t be a Blue Jays/Dodgers matchup every year. Players move around, get injured, and go through slumps. The stars will eventually retire. MLB’s challenge will not just be marketing the game as it is now, but figuring out how to make it a part of broader culture — and people’s lives — in the coming decades.Of course, all of this is hurtling toward December, when the collective bargaining agreement expires between the MLB Players Association and the league. Perhaps the biggest issue in negotiations will be “competitive balance,” essentially the idea that big market teams with money to burn can simply buy their way to championships. Team owners may push for a salary cap on players, and the fear is that stalled negotiations could lead to a lockout, which in turn could mean losing regular season games. No baseball at all seems like a good way to torch any excitement MLB has built up.By the wayIt could be its own issue of The Stepback, but MLB, like other sports, is deep in the sludge of sportsbetting. Two pitchers on the Cleveland Guardians are accused of working with bettors and rigging pitches during games. The MLB announced last fall it was placing new limits on bets on pitches.It’s not just baseball that wants to attract new kinds of fans. The NFL has been trying to court women via social media content and partnerships with women’s media brands.Netflix acquired the rights to several high-profile events: a game on opening night in March, the Home Run Derby, and this year, the Field of Dreams game that’s based off the 1989 film and takes place on the set field in Iowa. It’s part of a larger push by Netflix into live programming.Lina Khan agrees with you: Food at baseball stadiums is too expensive. Read thisThis piece by The Athletic on disputes over how MLB is talking about key issues in contract negotiations with league-affiliated content creators.This New Yorker piece on just how spectacular Ohtani really is.This piece by my colleague Kevin Nguyen about similar automation technology being used in tennis.And when the 2026 season is over, come back to this wistful, iconic essay by A. Bartlett Giamatti, former MLB commissioner (and actor Paul Giamatti’s father) about baseball and the passage of time.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Mia Sato