Friday Night Baseball on Apple TV+ will no longer be free in 2023

With just over a week until Opening Day, Apple TV+ dropped some unfortunate news Wednesday: Friday Night Baseball games will no longer be free to watch.

This will be the second year of Friday Night Baseball on Apple TV+, but in 2022, you simply needed to use your existing Apple ID or create one and download the app onto your TV. While some may not have liked having to use an app rather than just flipping on your TV and going to NBC Sports Philadelphia, ESPN, TBS or FOX, Friday Night Baseball was ultimately free in 2022.

Now, you’ll need to subscribe to Apple TV+ to be able to watch Friday Night Baseball. Subscribing for $6.99 a month gets you access to the entire Apple TV+ library, which includes popular shows like Severance and Ted Lasso, but some fans don’t want or can’t afford to add another monthly subscription.

As of now, the Phillies are slated to be on Friday Night Baseball twice in the first three months of the 2023 season:

• April 28 vs. Houston Astros at 8:10 p.m. ET
• June 23 vs. New York Mets at 7:05 p.m. ET

As Jimmy Traina of Sports Illustrated notes, it’s hard to say MLB’s focus is “growing the game” if for the right price, they’re willing to put up a paywall that prevents a segment of interested viewers from being able to watch.

You already need some form of cable to regularly watch your local team, at least until a direct-to-consumer option becomes available that allows you to pay just for access to a season’s worth of games or individual ones.

Now to watch Friday Night Baseball on Apple TV+, you’ll need a $6.99 a month subscription. Peacock — the streaming home of NBC — charges you $4.99 a month for their service, which has become required if you want to watch MLB Sunday Leadoff games. The Phillies are currently slated to appear on Peacock twice this year, April 23 vs. the Colorado Rockies and Sept. 3 vs. the Milwaukee Brewers. And if you aren’t subscribed, you won’t be watching.

The recent decision of Diamond Sports Group — which has the regional rights to nearly half of MLB’s teams — to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy has already forced the sport to begin to reimagine local broadcasts. After that gets sorted out, they may need to circle back to national packages. It’s one thing to put select games on a streaming service, it’s another to ask fans to sink even more money into just trying to watch the games. There’s only so much money most are willing to spend before they decide to do something else with their day instead.

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