One of the marquee events on the MLB calendar is almost here, as the Minnesota Twins and Philadelphia Phillies head to the cornfields of Iowa for the annual Field of Dreams Game on Thursday night. For the uninitiated: Every year, two teams head to Dyersville, Iowa, to play a regular-season game on the very same field that Kevin Costner built in the 1988 film. Some of baseball's brightest stars playing under a wide-open sky, reconnecting with why they fell in love with the game in the first place (and why it's always a good idea to play catch with your dad) — what could possibly be bad?
Well, just one thing, unfortunately: For the first time, the Field of Dreams Game will be broadcast exclusively on Netflix, as the streaming giant continues to try and gain a foothold into Major League Baseball. And while executives have promised they've learned from this season's past mistakes, their work so far should have fans everywhere awfully nervous.
Netflix's MLB gaffes don't inspire confidence in Field of Dreams Game broadcast
Netflix has long been desperate to become a destination for live sports, and they turned their eye to baseball this past offseason, working their way into MLB's revised rights deal. But the results so far suggest that the streamer was very far from being ready for prime time.
It started on Opening Night, when Netflix made an awful first impression but butchering just about every aspect of the first game of the 2026 season between the New York Yankees and San Francisco Giants. A sweaty, pointless introduction pushed first pitch back nearly half an hour, while the broadcast booth itself failed to bring much juice to what should have been a celebratory occasion. It was an improvement in the sense that there were no glaring technical issues — no small thing, considering how ugly their NFL debut went the previous winter — but overall it left the sense that the folks at Netflix were desperate to ingratiate themselves to an audience and a sport whose appeal they fundamentally didn't understand.
That sense only deepened during the Home Run Derby, when the start was again pushed back due to bloated pregame festivities and a crew featuring names like Hunter Pence, Anthony Rizzo, CC Sabathia, Albert Pujols and Barry Bonds spent their time aimlessly discussing everything but the action happening in front of them. Combine that with an inability to actually track each ball in flight successfully, and you had another nightmare of a broadcast.
None of which inspires confidence entering Thursday night. The running them of Netflix's MLB coverage so far is a complete failure to grasp exactly what makes baseball special, and why it stirs such emotion in people in the first place. Their introduction to the 2026 regular season featured New York City taxis and inexplicable break dancing; they couldn't even muster excitement for the Home Run Derby, for pete's sake. And now they're tasked with celebrating one of the sport's touchstones, arguably the purest distillation we have of our national pastime?
How can Netflix hit a home run with Field of Dreams Game?
In fairness, Netflix itself seems to understand that.
“This is about us not overthinking this or trying to do too much,” Netflix VP of sports Gabe Spitzer told Front Office Sports. “It’s a game that matters for these two teams in the playoff chase, it’s an iconic venue, and we want to let that do most of the work.”
Spitzer also hinted that Field of Dreams star Kevin Costner would be taking part in the broadcast, though he declined to say in what capacity.
Which is what this game should be about, really. The film, and the power of the setting, sell themselves — all Netflix needs to do is stir up those echoes, capture the corn at golden hour and get the heck out of the way. But they've shown zero ability to be able to do that in any of their prior forays into MLB, so what would be different this time? If history is any guide, we're going to have the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson twerking live on the air.
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