Baseball fans have more ways than ever to stream Major League Baseball games, but keeping track of where to watch can be a challenge. National broadcasts remain spread across multiple networks and streaming services, while local games are increasingly shifting away from traditional regional sports networks. Add in exclusive streaming deals and blackout restrictions, and figuring out how to watch your favorite team can feel feel as challenging as deciphering Tarik Skubal’s pitch arsenal. The 2025 MLB season is set to begin with the Tokyo Series on March 18 and 19, featuring the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs at the Tokyo Dome. Following this international opener, Opening Day for the remaining teams is scheduled for March 27. Major networks such as Fox, ESPN, TBS, and Apple TV+ will continue their coverage, with ESPN set to air a doubleheader on Opening Day and TBS maintaining its Tuesday-night broadcasts. The Roku Channel has taken over MLB Sunday Leadoff, and Apple TV+ continues to offer Friday Night Baseball. Meanwhile, MLB.tv remains the go-to service for out-of-market games, and local media rights are changing as MLB takes over broadcasts for teams including the San Diego Padres, Arizona Diamondbacks, and Cleveland Guardians. The postseason lineup remains largely the same, with ESPN networks airing the Wild Card Series, TBS handling the National League playoffs, and Fox carrying the American League playoffs and the World Series. And with the upcoming end of ESPN’s MLB contract after 2025, this season could mark a turning point for baseball’s media landscape. To help you navigate all the options, we’ve broken down the best ways to watch Major League Baseball in 2025. This story has been updated for the 2025 season. Sling TV includes ESPN in its channel lineup as well as NBC Sports regional content in select markets, allowing some fans to watch their hometown teams. Over the air a great amplified indoor Tv antenna Televes Bexia Read our review Since broadcast baseball has largely gone the way of the Sunday doubleheader, there are few options for watching any game without a subscription of one kind or another. The Fox network, however, can still be had for free with a good TV antenna. That will give you access to a bunch of nationally broadcast Saturday-afternoon games. If you’re purchasing an antenna for the first time, remember to first check to see which stations you can receive in your area and which type of antenna you’ll need to pull in your local Fox affiliate. You should also check our recommendations for the best TV antennas. Friday Night Baseball on Apple TV+ the only source for friday night baseball Apple TV+ Read our review Best Prices Today: $6.99 at Apple Apart from buying a TV antenna, your least-expensive option—and the only way to get Friday-night games—is to sign up for a subscription to Apple TV+. That costs $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year, but it gets you a wide array of other streaming entertainment, including hit shows such as the Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks-produced Masters of the Air, a series about WWII bomber pilots in Europe, and the mind-bending Severance. Apple TV+ is probably an option only for fans who need to see every single game, but at least it doesn’t cost a lot, and there’s lots of other entertainment to be had. T-Mobile customers on a Go5G Next plan, meanwhile, should take advantage of the opportunity to get both Apple TV+ (available now) and MLB.TV (starting March 25) for free. MLB Sunday Leadoff on The Roku Channel For fans looking for more free ways to watch some live baseball, The Roku Channel has taken over MLB Sunday Leadoff, offering one exclusive Sunday-afternoon game each week from May through August. Unlike other streaming-exclusive games, these matchups are available to watch without a subscription on The Roku Channel app, which is accessible on Roku devices, web browsers, smart TVs, and mobile devices. DirecTV Stream most sports channels of any service DirecTV Stream Read our review Best Prices Today: $101.98 at DirecTV Stream If you have Fox broadcast covered via an antenna, DirecTV’s MySports package is an excellent option for accessing the rest of the MLB action. Launched earlier this year, MySports offers a comprehensive selection of sports channels, including ESPN, FS1, TBS, MLB Network, and regional sports networks like Bally Sports and NBC Sports regional networks. Priced at $69.99 per month, this package ensures coverage of both national and local MLB games without the need for larger, more expensive TV bundles. Fubo a sports-centric streaming service Fubo Read our review Best Prices Today: $79.99 at Fubo The once soccer-centric streaming service offers a fair amount of baseball-broadcasting channels including ESPN, Fox, FS1, and the MLB Network. It also includes a selection of RSNs including the NBC Sports Bay Area and NBC Sports California networks and Marquee Sports Network. To get them all. you’ll need the Pro package for $84.99 a month (there’s a 7-day free trial for new customers) and the Sports Plus channel add-on for an additional $10.99 a month. Hulu + Live TV includes some regional sports networks Hulu + Live TV Read our review Best Prices Today: $82.99 at Hulu.com Hulu offers a single, flat-fee package that includes more than 90 live and on demand channels—including the ESPN, Fox, FS1, and TBS—plus regional sports networks in select areas. You get them all, in addition to Hulu’s original content and its streaming library, for $82.99 a month with ads or $95.99 a month without. Sling TV least-expensive streaming service Sling TV Read our review Best Prices Today: $40 at Sling TV Sling TV offers ESPN, ESPN2, TBS, Fox, and FS1, as well as NBC Sports for local-team broadcasts. If you want them all in one package, though, you’ll need to step up to the top-tier Sling Orange + Blue option (basically Sling’s two individual packages combined and offered at a discount) for $65.99 a month, with half off of your first month. Major League Baseball is making it a little easier for cord cutters to catch their favorite team’s games. YouTube TV our favorite tv streaming service YouTube TV Read our review Best Prices Today: $82.99 at YouTube TV Like Hulu, YouTube offers a flat-fee package of more than 100 channels for $82.99 per month ($69.99 per month for your first six months). The channel lineup includes Fox, FS1, ESPN, and TBS, but not the MLB network. MLB.TV the official source, but for out-of-market games only MLB.TV Best Prices Today: $29.99 at MLB.TV An MLB.tv subscription can get you a lot of baseball, but blackout rules still apply. The league’s official streaming service offers live streams of every regular season out-of-market game, with perks like multi-game viewing (up to four games at once), in-game highlights, and a free subscription to the At Bat Premium app. Note the phrase “out-of-market:” MLB.TV is not a true cord-cutting resource. It was really designed as way for transplants—a Red Sox fan living in Seattle, for example—to watch their former home teams. Local broadcasts remain subject to blackout rules, so you won’t be able to watch your hometown ball club live on TV this way. That said, MLB.TV remains a valuable option for dyed-in-the-wool seamheads to catch virtually every out-of-market game broadcast—home or away—throughout the regular season. And if you’re not particular about real-time viewing and can avoid social media and other potential spoiler sources, you can watch replays of your local team’s games on demand 90 minutes after the game’s conclusion. A full MLB.TV subscription, which gives you access to all 30 teams’ games—minus those of your local club’s—is $29.99 per month or $149.99 for the year. (We can show you how to score a $50 discount.) There’s also a single-team option that lets you follow a non-local squad of your choice for $129.99 per year. And once again, many T-Mobile subscribers can get MLB.TV for free. Play ball! Major League Baseball is finally stepping up the plate and giving cord-cutters more options to watch the Grand Old Game. We’d still like to see it offer more free streaming options of marquee matchups; until it does, you can take advantage of these cable alternatives, along with our guide to second-screen baseball apps, to make sure you catch all the action on the diamond. Read...

Despite dire predictions of climate breakdown, more Sports Utility Vehicles are being spotted on, and off, the roads. Read...

The complex, which which cost more than US$25 million, includes the Tonga High School Indoor Stadium, an international-standard rugby field, netball and tennis courts, and an aquatics centre. Read...

The complex, which cost more than US$25 million, includes the Tonga High School Indoor Stadium, an international-standard rugby field, netball and tennis courts, and an aquatics center. Read...

Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs take on the Gold Coast Tigers in Round 2 of the 2025 NRL Premiership at Belmore Sports Ground, Sydney. Read...

Adidas Motorsport took Wide World of Sports behind the scenes of the Mercedes F1 team only hours before the start of practice for the Australian Grand Prix. Read...

Sky has today announced that it has the exclusive New Zealand broadcast rights for the upcoming 2025 British and Irish Lions Tour of Australia, and has extended its exclusive broadcast partnership with US PGA Championship Read...

A round-up of sports news from around the region. Read...

2degrees has launched the SupportHER Club to empower young girls in New Zealand, aiming to promote sports participation amidst declining engagement rates. Read...

AMD loves to build to a crescendo. As it’s shown since 2016, when its first Ryzen CPUs launched, the company progresses incrementally but steadily—until Team Red sits all the way at the top. That time has come for its 3D V-Cache processors, which sport extra L3 cache to boost gaming performance. When AMD released its first variant into the wild, that AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D shot past Intel’s best in gaming—but only gaming. Ryzen 7000X3D chips pulled more even with Team Blue, but still couldn’t pull ahead in some key benchmarks.  But now, with the release of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, AMD can take the crown for best chip for both gaming and productivity tasks. This $699 16-core, 32-thread slots above last August’s Ryzen 9 9950X, which previously served as the company’s premier chip. Accompanying the 9950X3D onto retail shelves today is the $599 12-core, 24-thread 9900X3D. This outcome seemed likely when the first Ryzen 9000X3D processor dropped last November, with the $479 8-core, 16-thread 9800X3D easily trouncing Intel’s best chips (both current and last gen). But now, as the benchmark numbers show, it’s confirmed. Because the run-up to this March 12 launch has been stuffed with hardware releases, we on the PCWorld team have only had a short time in our labs to give the 9950X3D a spin. But between my colleague Adam Patrick Murray’s preliminary numbers and other reviews from around the web, the story’s pretty clear—this chip slaps hard, as my boss Brad Chacos said in his 9800X3D write-up. Let’s dive into the highlights. (For a longer discussion about the 9950X3D, check out this week’s episode of our hardware show, The Full Nerd, embedded below.) 1. It’s a productivity beast (and still a gaming monster) For this third generation of 3D V-Cache CPUs, AMD’s top-tier X3D processor fully ties together the best in gaming and productivity performance. Productivity tasks have been a standing weakness for this subset of Ryzen CPUs, even with last gen’s improvements. This time around, no qualifiers are needed.  We’ll start with a look at how the Ryzen 9 9950X stacks up against its predecessor, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D. For productivity, our benchmarks showed improvements as high as 19 percent, with the average about 14 percent: If you’re a Premiere Pro person, you’ll see the smallest gain compared to last-gen’s best X3D chip—just a little under 5 percent. But for other hefty workloads, you’ll see as much as 11 percent in Cinebench 2024’s multithreaded test, 16 to 19 percent in Blender, and 16 percent in Photoshop. Meanwhile, in games, our initial benchmarks showed around a 10 percent average across the four titles we ran. While that may sound lackluster, sites with a broader range of games benchmarks show an average closer to 16 percent, with some notable variance between titles. But how about compared to the 9950X, AMD’s best non-3D V-Cache chip? This new 9950X3D holds even with the 9950X in productivity benchmarks. For concrete numbers, you can pop into Paul Alcorn’s review over at Tom’s Hardware. At stock settings, the 9950X3D shows an average improvement of about 1.5 percent across Cinebench’s multithreaded test, POV-Ray, V-Ray, Blender, Handbrake, and y-cruncher over the standard 9950X, or still within the margin of error. So the two deliver similar content creation performance. As for gaming, comparing the 9950X and 9950X3D shows the latter coming in with a huge jump in performance at 1080p. (Reminder: Reviewers test at lower resolutions to better evaluate CPU performance, as lower resolutions shift the workload from the GPU to the CPU.) Tom’s Hardware puts those gains at an average of 30 percent across 16 games. It’s a big win. All in all, if you’ve been looking to get high performance across the board, the 9950X3D is truly AMD’s flagship consumer part—no caveats. 2. The 9950X3D continues the Intel beatdown As we covered in our overview of the 9800X3D last November, AMD’s mid-range X3D chip put the pain on Intel’s best consumer chip, the Core Ultra 9 285K. My boss Brad Chacos sums it up well here: “In the four games we tested, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D runs an average of 25 percent faster than the 285K at 1080p resolution. That’s a massive unheard-of gulf, and it’s actually being dragged down by the results in Total War Warhammer 3, which runs similarly on every processor we tested. If you take that out, the 9800X3D runs a whopping 30 percent faster than Intel’s biggest dog. It’s 45 percent faster than the 285K in Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing off.” While reviews across the web show nearly equal performance between the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the mix of superior gaming and productivity performance is what catapults the 9950X3D above other CPUs. In fact, Intel’s current flagship part is not just outdone by AMD’s best parts, but its own last-gen processor, the Core i9-14900K. The Core Ultra 9 285K only manages to hold its own in select productivity benchmarks, where it ekes just past the 9950X3D—so if you have specific workloads, it could still be the better choice. But for raw numbers, the difference is small when the 9950X3D is left at stock settings—and it pretty much disappears when you flip on PBO for the 9950X3D, which gives it an added boost. 3. But you do pay less for Intel…and the AMD 9800X3D Intel does have one advantage, which is price. The MSRP for the 285K is $589, or $110 less than the $699 9950X3D. That’s a sizable chunk of cash that could be put toward a better motherboard, nicer power supply, or more RAM. However, it’s not the only chip with a cost advantage. AMD’s own Ryzen 7 9800X3D sports an MSRP of $479. As an 8-core, 16-thread CPU, it punches hard for its weight, given that its gaming performance is competitive with the 9950X3D and sometimes even beats the more expensive CPU. For its part, the standard Ryzen 9 9950X has a new list price of $549. So while the 9950X3D doesn’t cost more than its predecessor at launch, you are paying a premium for its high-end performance across the board. Street price for the Ryzen 7 9800X3D on Newegg on March 11, 2025.PCWorld As for street prices—as of March 11, the day before the new Ryzen 9 9950X3D’s launch, the calculus looks like this on Newegg: $539 – AMD Ryzen 9 9950X $479 – AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D $445 – Intel Core i9-14900K $620 – Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Unless you need the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K for specific productivity tasks that favor Team Blue, those who are predominantly productivity focused will get the most bang for their buck from AMD’s 9950X. Gamers seeking top performance can lean on Ryzen 7 9800X3D, unless they really want to save cash and drop down to the older Intel Core i9-14900K. Basically, if you want no limits on consumer CPU performance, you’ll pay more for it—but you get plenty for your money. 4. More power, more performance For Ryzen 9000X3D, AMD tucked the extra L3 cache at the bottom of the die, rather stacking it on top—and that allowed the company to run more electricity through the chips. Accordingly, this new 9950X3D has a 170W TDP, up from the 7950X3D’s 120W TDP. The additional juice does help its performance, but as you might guess, it boosts overall power consumption, too. At least, during use. Adam Patrick Murray / PCWorld When we ran Cinebench R24’s multi-threaded benchmark, the total system power draw rose on average by about 70W, or 27 percent. But at idle, we saw lower total system power draw with the 9950X3D, which coasted about 10W under the 7950X3D PC. So while this chip is more efficient, it still will take more power. Adam Patrick Murray / PCWorld For people who need this kind of performance, that difference in energy use likely won’t hit too hard—even with today’s kilowatt-hour rates. But that plus potential additional heat generated should be considered by buyers, if those are concerns. Read...