Dive Brief:
- TikTok and Major League Baseball are deepening their existing partnership in a bid to expand the sport’s global appeal with exclusive content, greater creator access to MLB players and properties and a player engagement initiative, per a release from MLB.
- Using TikTok’s recently released GamePlan product suite, designed to help sports partners drive discovery and engagement, MLB will look to expand its appeal to communities in Europe, Japan, Korea and Mexico through localized content.
- The expanded partnership will also grant select creators access to MLB’s current and archival content to enhance their baseball-related stories. Additionally, the league will work with TikTok to give creators behind-the-scenes access to select league events.
Dive Insight:
For a sport invented in the 1800s, baseball has proven quite popular on TikTok, a decidedly 21st-century platform. TikTok posts using a #MLB hashtag grew nearly 60% in 2025, and MLB’s various global accounts have racked up more than 10.7 million followers, according to release details. During last year’s World Series, interest in the game spiked, with views on MLB’s international accounts surging 426% in Japan and 710% in Korea year over year.
Meanwhile, 85% of fans use TikTok as a second-screen experience during live events, according to TikTok Sports Messaging Research. The expanded partnership gives MLB a chance to ensure its message still reaches fans when they turn their attention away from the field.
MLB and TikTok have already been working closely, developing various sponsorship deals and having the league participate in TikTok’s Pulse Premiere offering, which places ads directly after content from premium publishers.
The expanded access kicked off during this year’s spring training camps, where TikTok created an exclusive lounge within the MLB Player House in Phoenix. In the lounge, TikTok hosted activities to help MLB players learn how to create engaging content that connects them with fans. That experience will be replicated at the upcoming MLB Player House in Miami.
In December, TikTok introduced GamePlan, a suite of tools designed to help sports-oriented brands tap into fan communities on the platform. GamePlan includes an analytics dashboard to help brands understand fan behavior and discover trending conversations. Using an anchor link on relevant videos, brands could bring fans to a dedicated in-app destination featuring official accounts, schedules and standings and even purchase tickets.
Through this feature, MLB will create a hub to provide fans with game updates, behind-the-scenes content, creator perspectives and other information. During the season, MLB will use the hub and its accounts to share game highlights, as well as long-form videos recapping each series and roundups showcasing the week’s most exciting moments.
