New York — Major League Baseball and NBC agreed to a new Sunday morning package of broadcast streams that will start at 11:30 a.m. and noon EDT.
The deal that requires all other big league games on those days to be scheduled to start no earlier than 1:30 p.m.
The package announced Wednesday starts May 8, with the Chicago White Sox at the Boston Red Sox. That game will be broadcast by NBC in addition to being streamed on Peacock. All other games will be available only on Peacock.
The first six games are to start at 11:30 a.m. and the remainder of the package at noon.
The scheduling appears to take into account the collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the players’ association, which states “not more than four games per league per year may be scheduled or rescheduled to start between 10:30 a.m. and noon.”
There already is one pre-noon game on each season’s schedule, a Patriots Day game at Boston’s Fenway Park on the third Monday of April that starts just after 11 a.m.
Peacock also will televise the All-Star Futures Game.
NBC televised MLB from 1957 to 2000.