Roku Will Stream Sunday MLB Games for Free, Starting This Week

Roku is getting into live sports. On Monday, the streaming giant announced that it had reached a deal with MLB to become the new home for Sunday's first baseball game of the day. These games will be available for free via The Roku Channel, the streamer's free service that is available on its namesake platform and devices, a mobile app for iOS and Android, as well as on smart TVs and streaming devices running software from Samsung, Google (Google TV or Android TV) or Amazon (Fire TV). 

The company says that users will not need to sign up for an account or pay for a subscription to watch these games. You can also watch the games by going to TheRokuChannel.com, while paying subscribers to the league's MLB.TV streaming service will be able to watch the games anywhere in the world within the MLB app, even on platforms that have The Roku Channel available. 

Roku's first game will be this Sunday, May 19, with the Red Sox taking on the Cardinals at 1:05 p.m. ET. The streamer has 18 games for the 2024 baseball season, with some starting as early as 11:35 a.m. ET. Its last game of the season will be on Sept. 15 when the Reds take on the Twins. 

MLB previously offered these early Sunday games through Peacock, but no agreement was made for the 2024 baseball season, allowing Roku the opportunity to bag the rights. Roku and MLB said on Monday that they struck an "exclusive multi-year rights partnership."

Like with the Peacock games last year, the contests airing on Roku will often be the only baseball games taking place at that time. In addition to the live MLB games on Sundays, Roku will also be adding a new "MLB Zone" to its platform with highlights and recaps as well as an MLB channel inside its free, ad-supported The Roku Channel service. 

A full schedule of the Roku baseball games can be found below.