MLB is reviving its Players’ Weekend after a five-year hiatus, in turn restoring one of the league’s most prominent vehicles to advance its marketing of individual players. 

The initiative, which begins Friday and ends Sunday, will bring back a program that ran from 2017 to 2019, but then was shelved for a variety of reasons, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the shift of the league’s on-field uniform contract to Nike. Like before, Players’ Weekend is designed to showcase the personalities of individual athletes. But instead of special uniforms bearing player nicknames, specific plans include the use of customized bats and personalized cleats, in-game and social media content, and segments within game broadcasts. Special game caps for the weekend will also feature player numbers on the side panels.

Each of the three days of Players’ Weekend will be centered on defined themes, with Friday’s games to showcase players’ off-field interests, Saturday’s schedule to focus on charitable causes and community efforts, and Sunday’s games to spotlight players’ appreciation of those who aided their journeys to the big leagues.

“The time was right to bring this back and give players the opportunity to express themselves beyond the nightly stats,” Noah Garden, MLB deputy commissioner for business and media, tells Front Office Sports. “This is for the fans, but it’s also for the players, and it’s all about finding new ways to make a connection.”

The program is happening as MLB’s efforts to promote its players remain a source of fervent debate, both among fans and within the industry. Most recently, Mets president of business operations M. Scott Havens said at the FOS Huddle in the Hamptons event that MLB has not sufficiently marketed its player talent, particularly those beyond megastars Aaron Judge (above) and Shohei Ohtani.

The league, however, is coupling Players’ Weekend with a new iteration of its “Baseball Is Something Else” brand campaign, with new spots featuring Academy Award nominee Brian Tyree Henry. 

Little Big Leagues

Players’ Weekend will additionally coincide with Sunday’s prime-time staging of the seventh version of the MLB Little League Classic. The game between the Yankees and Tigers will be played in Williamsport, Pa., site of the Little League World Series, and the in-person attendance will predominantly involve participating players and coaches from the high-profile youth event. 

ESPN will again show the MLB Little League Classic, an event that has long been a core part of its overall baseball programming, and, on Sunday, follows the network’s coverage of the Little League World Series. The Yankees-Tigers broadcast will be supplemented by a return of ESPN’s KidsCast alternate production featuring youth commentators. 

“That notion of appreciation and the journey to the majors has always been part of this particular game, but certainly will be enhanced here,” Phil Orlins, ESPN VP of production, tells FOS. “Players will be encouraged to let their guard down, but here in Williamsport, it all sort of happens authentically, anyway, just by being in this environment and how special it is.”

The NBA is making another proactive attempt to address load-management issues by adjusting its schedule. 

All 30 NBA teams announced their regular-season schedule for the 2024–2025 season Thursday, and Associated Press writer Tim Reynolds noted the league cut the average back-to-backs per team by 23%, removed instances of four games in five nights and eight games in 12 nights, and made sure that teams will not play a day before or after “high-profile national TV games.”

The criteria for “high-profile national TV game,” Reynolds later pointed out, are games on Christmas, ABC on Saturday night, TNT on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and national TV opening-week games—except for Friday. While these restrictions are more stringent than in years past, they do not completely absolve teams playing national TV games from back-to-backs.

For example, the Lakers face the Spurs in San Antonio on ESPN on Nov. 15, then travel to New Orleans to play the Pelicans in a regionally televised game the next day. And, on Jan. 28, the Lakers will face the 76ers in Philadelphia on TNT one day after playing the Hornets in Charlotte.

The NBA’s moves to address load management come even after the league already signed its next media-rights deal worth $77 billion with ESPN, NBCUniversal, and Disney last month. 

NFL Steals Christmas

NBA social-media teams took a page from the NFL’s book by pulling off creative schedule announcements, such as the Suns’ thread of memes or the Magic’s Spider Verse–inspired video.

But the NBA is facing pressure from the NFL continuing to schedule games on Christmas Day, a holiday that has traditionally been exclusive to the NBA. The NFL has aired a tripleheader for the last two years on Christmas—and while the NBA saw a viewership increase of 5% in 2022, that was driven by all five games simulcasting on ABC. In 2023, when only two of the five games aired on ABC, the NBA slate averaged just 2.85 million viewers, a 23% year-over-year dip, and the league’s lowest Christmas Day viewership on record. 

The NBA is continuing with its five-game slate this Christmas, with three games on ABC, highlighted by a matchup between the Lakers and Warriors. The NFL is pushing through with a doubleheader—even if Christmas Day falls on a Wednesday—and it will be exclusively streamed on Netflix, the first time the streaming giant will livestream any major U.S. sport.