MLB Announces Facebook Will Livestream Games with No Blackout Every Friday

Major League Baseball announced Thursday it has reached an agreement with Facebook that will allow the social media platform to broadcast one game every Friday without blackouts, according to the Wall Street Journal's Jared Diamond.

The partnership will reportedly begin on Friday, May 19, when Facebook broadcasts a clash between the Colorado Rockies and Cincinnati Reds. 

“This is very important for us to experiment [with Facebook]," MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said, according to Forbes' Maury Brown. 

"Baseball games are uniquely engaging community experiences, as the chatter and rituals in the stands are often as meaningful to fans as the action on the diamond. By distributing a live game per week on Facebook, Major League Baseball can re-imagine this social experience on a national scale," Dan Reed, Facebook's head of global sports partnerships, said, per Brown. 

This isn't the first time MLB has experimented with streaming live games for free. 

Last season, Yahoo streamed one game every day during the regular season in conjunction with MLB as a way to promote the game through digital channels.