Major League Baseball wants more of a footprint on TikTok. Just in time for spring training, the two companies announced Tuesday they were partnering to expand baseball content on TikTok, including creating an MLB hub in the app and, of course, bringing in more influencers.
Baseball is coming back after a season that was especially culturally relevant. The World Series last fall had its highest viewership in years, and an increasingly international audience tuned in to watch the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays after seven games and extra innings. There was a surge in interest on TikTok, too: The company says posts that include #MLB increased 60 percent in 2025, and views on international accounts for Japanese and Korean audiences surged during the World Series.
TikTok is angling to be the “second screen” for people tuning into games live, or for those checking in on a game they’re not watching. An MLB hub built into the app will feature highlights, game updates, and “behind-the-scenes content, and creator perspectives” (other platforms like X and Google Search have similar live game features). TikTok has partnered with other sports leagues in the past: FIFA will use similar features on the platform during the World Cup this summer, though that deal appears to be more robust than the MLB partnership. The TikTok sports integration, called GamePlan, was announced in December.
Fan-generated content is a core part of sports on TikTok — the company has said that it drives equal rates of engagement as official accounts do, and as I wrote after the World Series, fans and even casual viewers are really good at promoting MLB to their niche audiences. It’s no surprise, then, that the TikTok partnership will tap content creators to boost MLB’s presence on the platform. “Select creators” will get access to MLB’s archives to make content — notable considering the league has in the past been aggressive with copyright claims, according to creators.
“The problem is we got into this thing where we thought we could drive everything to our platforms,” Rob Manfred, MLB commissioner, said last year. The league realized it was the wrong tactic, he said. “You gotta go where people are going.” At the moment, TikTok is one of those places.
