US soft drinks brand Mountain Dew Baja Blast will serve as the new official soft drink of Major League Baseball (MLB) after PepsiCo, the brand's owner, extended its long-standing relationship with the competition.
As a part of the new partnership, Mountain Dew Baja Blast will gain prominent branding presence through the 2026 campaign, activating at all MLB stadiums in the US and Canada.
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Through the campaign, Mountain Dew will activate around home runs, operating a season-long promotion in which fans can earn rewards related to long-distance hits.
PepsiCo’s wider agreement with MLB, which has now lasted through four decades, includes the Gatorade sports drink brand, which will also continue to partner with the league. Gatorade has sponsored MLB since 1990.
MLB claims that the 2025 campaign brought “double-digit” viewership increases across its broadcast partners in key demographics such as the 17-and-under and 18-34-year-old categories, which will likely be major targets of the PepsiCo partnership.
The 2026 MLB campaign will begin on March 25, with the regular season running through September 27, and the postseason playoffs and World Series running to October 31 at the latest.
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By GlobalDataCrucially, this will be the first year of MLB’s new three-year media rights cycle, with Disney-owned ESPN, Comcast's NBCUniversal, Fox, Warner Bros. Discovery-owned TBS, and streaming giant Netflix all securing broadcast packages through 2028.
ESPN has also retained a broadcast package of 30 games for national distribution across its linear networks (and the ESPN app), including the Memorial Day game, the post-All-Star Game second-half, the Little League Classic, and more.
Despite choosing to end its long-standing broadcast coverage agreement with MLB at the end of the 2025 campaign, ESPN also acquired the rights to sell MLB.TV, the league’s out-of-market viewership offering, across its digital and streaming platforms.
In terms of streaming, a package of over 150 out-of-market game streams (one per day) has also been made available to ESPN, which will showcase them across the season.
For NBCUniversal, meanwhile, the major US media giant has secured a wide-ranging national broadcast slate that includes ESPN’s former Sunday Night Baseball slot, the Sunday Leadoff game, and all four post-season playoff wild-card round games.
Additionally, NBCU will also retain the Sunday Leadoff slate, which it held between 2022 and 2023, comprised of 18 games staged before or around noon.
Elsewhere, Netflix has picked up the rights for live MLB for the first time (though it will show the World Baseball Classic in Japan), showcasing a singular opening night game each edition for the next three years.
Netflix will also showcase the annual Home Run Derby exhibition and the 2026 return of the MLB at Field of Dreams game, as part of a commitment to show a special event game each season, which in the future may also include “MLB at Rickwood Field” or “MLB Speedway.”
Beyond ESPN, NBCU, and Netflix, MLB also has national broadcast deals with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery-owned TBS that run through 2028. Fox pays $714.3 million per year, while TBS pays $470 million per year.
