NBC’s baseball coverage starts to hit its stride this week as “Sunday Night Baseball” begins its summer stint on the network’s primetime schedule.
Beginning with Sunday night’s NL Central matchup between the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals, there will be a game on NBC every week until Labor Day. The only exception is July 12 because of the start of the All-Star break.
NBC will also have a game on Labor Day between the Cardinals and San Francisco Giants. The network will have the Wisconsin-Notre Dame college football game on Sept. 6.
This is the first of a three-year deal for NBC to have Sunday night games along with the Wild Card rounds after ESPN opted out of its original rights deal with MLB.
There were two early-season Sunday night games on NBC as well as an opening day doubleheader. The rest were streamed on Peacock.
Justin Byczek, NBC Sports EVP of programing and rights management, said the momentum that baseball has had the past two years as well as the network having a spot on Sunday night’s schedule made it a natural fit. With the NFL, NBA and baseball, NBC has sports on Sunday nights all but one week.
“Coming back there was a ton of excitement around baseball returning to NBC, obviously a property we have legacy with. I think the excitement that the offseason had and the progress that baseball was making only fueled that even more. And the game is easier to watch,” Byczek said.
ESPN averaged 1.83 million on Sunday night last year, its highest average since 2017. NBC has drawn at least 1.8 million for the two Sunday night games on linear television.
The format of “Sunday Night Baseball,” where play-by-play announcer Jason Benetti is joined in the booth by analysts from both teams, has also proved to be a success.
Benetti said at the beginning of the season that the aim was to have different conversations each week. That has been the case so far.
“The wide range of topics that we have covered is vast and so I think it’s gone great. I think that starting the NBC stretch of it will be awesome for people who are inclined to watch on broadcast TV and the wide reach that provides,” Benetti said.
This week’s analysts will be former slugger Albert Pujols, who won three NL MVP awards with the Cardinals, and Jim Deshaies, a former Cubs pitcher who is an analyst on their local broadcasts.
Deshaies has been a longtime friend of Benetti’s.
The Cubs-Cardinals game is one of many interesting matchups on NBC over the next couple of months. The schedule also includes Yankees-Red Sox on June 28, Padres-Dodgers on July 5, Dodgers-Yankees on July 19 and Giants-Red Sox on Aug. 23.
Sunday night’s game marks the first Cubs-Cardinals contest on NBC since June 3, 1989, when it was part of the Saturday afternoon “Game of the Week” window.
“There’s something of an enormity around ‘Sunday Night Baseball,'” Benetti said. “I think there’s real juice in these stadiums, and Major League Baseball has done a great job of building to that.”
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