MLB’s Expanded Postseason Has Big Implications For Networks, Advertisers

Major League Baseball’s playoffs begin in a little over a week, starting a new 12-team format for the league.

The total number of clubs is up from the previous 10, but tacking on two more participants won’t just add a few more games. MLB’s new wildcard round means up to 12 contests across four separate three-game series, with as many as nine elimination games among them. For the entire playoffs, MLB increases the maximum game inventory total from 43 (2-20-14-7) under the previous format to 53 (12-20-14-7) under the new one. And even if purists hate to see more obstacles put in the way of dominant teams following an already long 162-game regular season, dollars and fan interest are the goal here.

To that end, iSpot data shows 19.0 billion in TV ad impressions and $354.3 million in est. national TV ad spend during last year’s playoffs — or 760 million ad impressions and $14.2 million in spend per game. Extrapolated out for the maximum number of games this year (the aforementioned 53), that’s 40.28 billion TV ad impressions and $752.6 million in spend. The added reach for brands and ad revenue for networks is why despite an effective sample size of 162 regular season games already, MLB still wants more games to crown its champion.

While more teams increases the likelihood of rewarding a “random” (read: lesser) team, MLB long ago embraced that approach after divisional realignment and the introduction of the wildcard back in the 1990s. They took it a step further about a decade ago with the wildcard game, and now the full round brings us to the logical endpoint of that expansion-focused approach.

MLB would probably prefer the best big-market teams win more often than not, for the sake of ratings and fan interest. But with diminishing guarantees there (even as the sport does get more centered on a handful of richer clubs), they’ll take the ad reach and financial benefits that come with the expanded field.

Network partners will too, especially after linear TV lost some games to MLB’s Peacock and Apple TV+ deals this year, plus the Yankees’ separate Amazon Prime Video contract. Granted, a bunch of those contests would’ve wound up on regional networks instead. So the league has been able to take advantage of streaming services’ need to air live sports, and in the process, get paid and potentially get in front of younger audiences.

Will those younger audiences watch once games revert back to linear TV? That’s arguably the biggest test of whether these new experiments work or not. And it may take awhile to get a final verdict.