John Deere, the major US tractor brand, has become the presenting partner of the MLB Field of Dreams game, a mid-season special event match.
The game, which will see the Minnesota Twins face the Philadelphia Phillies, will be hosted on August 13 on a site in Iowa adjacent to the ‘Field of Dreams’, a tourist attraction centered on the fictional field from the baseball-centric 1989 film of the same name.
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John Deere has been a commercial partner of MLB since the beginning of the 2026 season, and will now be the presenting partner of the event, which returns for the first time since 2022, replacing insurance company Geico.
Geico supported the Field of Dreams game across its first two editions, in 2021 and 2022, respectively.
Alongside community-focused charity campaigns, John Deere will gain prominent branding presence across the Field of Dreams game, in-person and on broadcast, alongside national advertising campaigns.
John Deere director of brand management Jen Hartmann pointed to the Field of Dreams’ significance to rural farming communities as a significant driver behind the brand’s willingness to center its MLB sponsorship around this event in particular.
The event will be broadcast on streaming service Netflix, which captured an MLB rights package at the start of the 2026 season that included the recent Home Run Derby (part of All-Star Week).
Netflix’s multi-year rights package, which runs through 2028, includes the rights to one MLB special event game each year, which this year is the Field of Dreams game, but in the future may also be the “MLB at Rickwood Field” or “MLB Speedway” events.
Netflix’s broadcast of the game will be self-produced.
The streamer’s recent coverage of the July 13 game averaged 5.3 million viewers, a drop of 8% on the tally a year prior on pay-TV giant ESPN, making it the least-viewed Home Run Derby since 2003, a reflection of the fact that Netflix is still a newcomer to the MLB space and this is its first season with any baseball rights in the US market.
That figure, still a solid audience by MLB standards (it was the second most-watched MLB game broadcast of the year behind the All-Star Game itself), but it is nonetheless a number the streamer will want to expand on given its sports rights push in recent years.
