America’s past time is baseball. If you grew up playing baseball there is a good chance you have a favorite team you follow and watch whenever you have extra time. It’s hard to watch all 162 games, mainly because you’d have to be home in front of your TV for way too long. There’s also a good chance your team isn’t in your hometown market because you might have moved to somewhere new in the country. That’s where the MLB sets itself apart from other major sports; its MLB.TV app allows for users to watch every out of market game live for a fee.
Android, iOS, and even Windows have dedicated apps to watch games. If you want to watch more than one free game a day, you’ll need to pay a subscription fee to access the games. Right now you can pay up front for the entire season which runs through October, and that costs $112.99 per year. If you’d like to go month-to-month, which may be a better option for those of you who don’t have much to hope for, you can pay $24.99 per month. You can cancel at anytime so you aren’t locked into your plan for the whole season. If you simply want to watch and follow your team only, you can pay $87.49 one time to get a season pass. All of these options allow for streaming to any of the 400 compatible devices like the iPhone, iPad, Sony Playstation 4, Xbox One, Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV and more. If you only want to watch on one device, you can pay as little as $2.99 per month. Lastly, if you’re a T-Mobile subscriber, you qualify for a free MLB.TV subscription by signing up for T-Mobile Tuesdays.
I have been an MLB.TV Premium subscriber for the past five years and continue to be one with each new season. The cost might seem high considering other streaming services, such as Hulu and Netflix, offer a variety of other content for less. However, if you’re a baseball fan, the only place you can watch every game is with a premium subscription to MLB.TV. I’m a fan of the San Francisco Giants and love to watch every single game. I mostly listen to the home broadcasts for day games while I am at work, and I watch the night games on my iPad, Android smartphone, Andorid TV or iPhone. Video quality, sound quality and instant loading of live content is what brings me back to the app every single year. It’s reliable and if I happen to miss a game, it shows me the video highlights as well as offers a nice recap. While I no longer participate in any fantasy baseball leagues anymore, it still is one of the best tools for keeping track of stats and projections. There’s even Statcast Leaders which shows home run distance, exit velocity, average exit velocity, fastest pitches and average pitch velocity if you’re into them.
The app interface for Android and iOS are well laid out. Each main area is given its own tab: Scores, News, Videos, Standings, and Stats all have their own sections keeping a large amount of information neatly organized. It’s easy to navigate within the app and sort the information you want to see from the information you don’t want to see. Games are a click away from listening or watching, and a nice feature is having the option to choose which broadcast (home or away) you want to listen or watch.
While the premium subscription fees might be high for some, it is a reasonable price to pay for an entire season to watch your team from start to finish. With over 400 compatible devices there’s a high chance that you have at least one that can stream live games through audio or video. It’s a mature app that is well-developed and well worth the cost, and has me wishing for similar subscriptions to live NFL and NBA games as well.
Learn more at MLB.TV.