The 2026 Major League Baseball season opened Wednesday on Netflix. (I didn’t watch; I gave up on baseball after the Pirates lost the 1992 NLCS.)
The broadcast, as explained by John Ourand of _Puck_, had connective tissue to Netflix’s most recent NFL foray.
As Ourand explains in his _Varsity_ newsletter, several ads that appeared during the Yankees-Giants game from San Francisco were “[make-goods](https://puck.news/newsletters/the-varsity/?utm_campaign=The+Varsity+-+SUBSCRIBERS+%283%2F26%2F26%29&utm_content=The+Varsity+-+SUBSCRIBERS+%283%2F26%2F26%29&utm_medium=email_action&utm_source=customer.io&utm_term=f6c6060e9bb201bc831b)” due to Netflix’s failure to deliver numbers it had promised to advertisers for the Christmas doubleheader featuring Cowboys-Commanders and Lions-Vikings.
The games generated 19.9 million viewers for Cowboys-Commanders and 27.5 million for Lions-Vikings; however, Netflix fell short of the guarantees for the 18-54 demographic — reportedly by 18 percent.
And with Netflix not having any live sports from Christmas until exactly three months later, the “make-good” ads happened during the MLB game.
Ourand reports that Netflix offered to place ads on other programming, but many of them preferred to have ads purchased for a live sporting event to be used for a live sporting event.
With Netflix, to date, having only a smattering of live sports, the next opportunity was the first game of the MLB season.
For streamers like Netflix that will be cherry-picking big events and not buying full packages, it could become a common issue.