How to Stream the 2015 MLB Playoffs
It’s early October, which means it’s time to start making some mental notes for the approaching decorative gourd season while enjoying some playoff baseball. You’re on your own for the former, but we can help with the latter. The MLB playoffs start on Tuesday, beginning with the American League Wild Card game. Here’s how to watch:
- Traditional television: For you squares (like me!) who still want to make use of that giant box around which your living rooms are oriented, all of these games should be available to you. In general, look for the AL games on Fox and the NL games on TBS (somebody maybe tell Ted Turner the Braves didn’t quite make it this year), although you’ll need ESPN, MLB Network, and Fox Sports 1 (now being rebranded as simply FS1) for some of the early action. Here’s a helpful schedule.
- MLB.com Gameday: This old standby makes you feel both seriously plugged-in, by virtue of its integrated PITCHf/x and StatCast data, video clips, and social media streams, and seriously devoid of a human experience, by virtue of the fact that, say, Prince Fielder and Don Kelly do not really have the same body types. Free for anyone with a computer and an internet connection. Compare MLB At Bat app for mobile users.
- MLB.tv: MLB’s premium, web-based service brought you live streams of all out-of-market television broadcasts during the regular season for a non-negligible fee. Due to the exclusivity of MLB’s playoff television broadcast rights agreements, however, you should not expect this service to be available in the postseason, with the exception of Gameday Audio, which the fine print indicates will remain available to MLB.tv subscribers. Instead, things shift to what the league calls Postseason.tv, which will allow subscribers to view “live alternate video feeds,” but not the main television broadcast feed. This will set you back $9.99 for the entire postseason, and does require you authenticate with you TV provider. But if you already pay for TV, the next two options might be your best bet.
- TBS.com: It is not exactly clear what TBS will be offering this year in terms of playoff baseball streaming, but, in 2014, live streams were available to cable subscribers on TBS.com and through the Watch TBS mobile app, giving us every reason to believe the same will be available in 2015. TBS is also available to Sling TV subscribers.
- Fox Sports Go: It’s the same story for Fox, which does not appear to have announced the scope of its playoff streaming, but we assume that, at a minimum, live streams will be available to cable subscribers through the Fox Sports Go app and at FoxSportsGo.com, as they were for the 2014 postseason.
- Terrestrial radio: ESPN Radio will have every game. Find the dial location of your local ESPN Radio affiliate here. ESPN Radio also provides iOS and Android apps.
- Satellite radio: SiriusXM. A subscription is required, but they almost always are offering free trials.
Enjoy cold weather baseball!
(Header image via Keith Allison)
Alec is a founding contributor at ALDLAND and a writer at Banished to the Pen and TechGraphs. He interfaces with sports twitter @ALDLANDia.
What about living in a city with a decent baseball team and stream the game by collecting light particles from the sun bouncing off the players and “streaming” into your eyeballs?
And what does that cost?
MLB.TV posts an archive of each game within an hour of the game ending, usually 20-30 minutes after the game. Doesn’t matter if it was blacked out — you can still watch the archive. Also, the best part about the archive is you get to quickly skip past the commercials and pitching changes. I actually prefer to watch the games this way, because rather than a draining 3 hours with commercials, you get more like 2 hours 15 minutes of pure baseball.
Based on this information from MLB.tv (http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/subscriptions/index.jsp), if seems like if you’re a current MLB.TV subscriber, you CAN stream playoff games IF you authenticate with a pay TV provider like Time Warner, Comcast, DirecTV, etc.
And if you aren’t a current subscriber, you can sign up for $9.99. You still have to authenticate with a pay TV provider.
I authenticated and it seems to have worked. We’ll see when the games start.
In the fine print, it says “Postseason Live Blackout: Due to Major League Baseball exclusivities, during the MLB Postseason, all live games except for those games for which Authenticated Access is available, will be blacked out in the United States (including the territories of Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands) and Canada.”
The key part is “except for those games for which Authenticated Access is available” so hopefully it works!
Note that Postseason.TV (companion coverage with alternative camera angels… i.e. not the regular broadcast) seems like it is a totally different subscription than MLB.TV. It’s $4.99: http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/subscriptions/index.jsp?product=PostseasonTV
Thank goodness I have MLB.tv so that I don’t have to watch the dreck that espn currently is. Houston’s radio team is a much better alternative.
Get a VPN, set it overseas, enjoy MLB.tv for free
According to this :
http://www.tbs.com/sports/mlb.html
TBS will be streaming games again, but a cable subscription is still required.
I was able to watch the Yanks / Astros game live with mlb.tv last night (Oct. 6th) so the postseason games do seem to be there for the watching.
MLB.TV working for me (authenticated with a friend’s pay TV provider account) for the NL wild card game. However, it only works on my computer and phone. Not on Apple TV or Xbox One.
I see advertising to stream the playoffs but yet when I click to watch the game, it tells me its not available, yet I am a year long subscriber. This makes no sense. I have no control on who my TV provider is nor should it matter. I paid the money, MLB should deliver the service.
It’s ridiculous that I can’t pay $XX to get all the playoff games on mlb.tv. They could split the revenue with the TV networks, there are a ton of ways this could be worked out. Not very 21st Century savvy, and very much anti-baseball to the tech-savvy baseball fan.