By: Alex Eells
Since 2022, Major League Baseball has started its postseason with a best-of-three Wild Card Series between the third- through sixth-seeded teams in each league. That creates two series per league, with No. 3 hosting No. 6, and No. 4 hosting No. 5.
In November 2025, NBC Sports took control of MLB’s Wild Card Series and Sunday Night Baseball rights previously held by ESPN.
When MLB introduced the expanded Wild Card Series in 2022, the postseason began on a Friday, with the series scheduled for Friday and Saturday, followed by potential Game 3s on Sunday. As with most things in sports, television ratings played a major role in the eventual change to a weekday schedule.
The 2022 schedule presented an immediate problem. MLB played one game on ABC and three on ESPN, staggering the starts at noon, 2 p.m., 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. Because no West Coast team was hosting a series, ESPN had to cram the games into the afternoon and evening. The noon Friday games were not ideal for growing the league’s audience.
Saturday games created an even bigger problem. College football traditionally dominates sports television throughout the day, competing with the MLB for viewers.
Sundays continued presenting challenges. The MLB ended up with only one Wild Card game at 7:30 p.m., the same time as NBC’s popular “Sunday Night Football.”
Four of the nine Wild Card games surpassed 3 million viewers, including the one Sunday game and the game carried over-the-air on ABC. However, since MLB moved the Wild Card Series to Tuesday through Thursday audiences have surpassed 6 million viewers, a level the league would struggle to reach while competing directly with football.
The issue was not simply the audience. ESPN also had limited incentive to disrupt its football programming to accommodate a less-viewed MLB postseason game, while placing games on ESPN2 made them less accessible to casual viewers.
That brings up the question of game times, which largely relates to television.
MLB prioritizes scheduling its postseason games staggered throughout the day. During NBC Sports’ first season with MLB, the network has had two primary places to put games: its over-the-air NBC network and streaming on Peacock.
Every game airing on NBC is also available on Peacock, while Peacock-exclusive games are available through NBC Sports Network on a limited number of cable systems.
That makes the 8 p.m. ET window an obvious starting point. It is a traditional prime-time slot and one of the most valuable windows available to a network. From there, NBC has to work backward.
The network does not want to disrupt its evening news programming, creating a hard stop around 6 p.m. each day. Postseason baseball games are generally scheduled into three-hour windows, although games can run shorter or longer depending on the action. On paper, that leaves room for games beginning around noon and 3 p.m.
There is another factor working in MLB’s favor. With the departures of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and “The Kelly Clarkson Show,” NBC no longer has a traditional daytime lineup to protect, providing more flexibility. That availability could have allowed the airing of more day-time games, but instead, San Diego hosting a series created an opportunity, and a problem. A West Coast game could be pushed later into the evening, allowing NBC to avoid an early start on the East Coast.
The result was a schedule that gave the working public only one game to miss during the traditional workday. NBC placed one game at 2 p.m., followed by a Peacock-exclusive game at 5 p.m. and another at 8 p.m.
If MLB wants to maintain staggered starts while accommodating West Coast teams, it has to push games towards one extreme or the other. Games with a noon ET start that begin at 9 a.m. on the West Coast or a 7 p.m. PT starting at 10 p.m. ET.
ESPN had more weekday flexibility because its programming schedule was built around sports. Still, the network faced many of the same challenges. In 2025, Wild Card games started at 1, 3, 6 and 9 p.m. ET. In 2024, the starts were scheduled for 2:30, 4, 5:30 and 8:30 p.m.
The difference is not necessarily which schedule is better for every fan. It is how MLB and its television partners have chosen to balance three competing priorities: maximizing viewership, protecting network programming and giving fans reasonable access to games.
MLB’s decision to move the Wild Card Series to weekdays solved one problem by removing much of the competition from college football and the NFL. The new problem the league faces is finding four consecutive game windows that work across time zones while also fitting the network’s programming needs.
