Cubs and White Sox fans — and most baseball fans, for that matter — will need Peacock to watch their teams play Sunday, when NBCUniversal presents all 15 MLB games on the schedule, a first for a media company in a single day.
NBCU’s “Star-Spangled Sunday” includes two games on NBC and three on NBC Sports Network that will simulcast on Peacock. Every other game will be exclusive to Peacock, including the Sox-Guardians game at 1 p.m. and Cardinals-Cubs at 1:30.
Each game will have a dedicated broadcast crew, some of which will be a combination of announcers from the participating teams. Guardians play-by-play voice Matt Underwood will join Sox analyst Steve Stone in the booth, with Guardians reporter Andre Knott on the field. The Cubs game will have an all-Cubs crew of Alex Cohen, Mark Sweeney and Taylor McGregor.
“There is no home base studio show on the day, but there will be consistency throughout all these presentations in the graphics look,” said Rob Hyland, NBC Sports’ senior vice president of production and coordinating producer, who will oversee “Star-Spangled Sunday.”
“The upper left score bar that you see in our coverage will be consistent on 14 of the 15 games. The NESN game, featuring the Red Sox and Angels, will use their own bar, but the theme music will be consistent. There will be a lot of carryover as you are flipping from game to game.”
Programming begins with a pregame show at 11 a.m. on NBC and Peacock, followed by the “MLB Sunday Leadoff” game of Mets-Braves at 11:30. NBC’s other game is the “Sunday Night Baseball” broadcast of Padres-Dodgers at 6 p.m. NBCSN will carry Twins-Yankees at 12:30, Blue Jays-Mariners at 4 and Red Sox-Angels at 8:30.
Peacock will have a multiview option that allows fans to watch up to four games at once. “MLB Multiview” will provide a curated four-box view of the top games and allow viewers to switch the audio from each. It also will have a catch-up feature to see key plays that viewers missed.
YouTube TV subscribers who don’t subscribe to Peacock still will have access to every game as part of YouTube’s agreement with NBCUniversal.