We know the Seattle Mariners have a team worth watching in 2026, and that anyone who prefers streaming can access them through Mariners.TV or MLB.TV. However, the lack of information about traditional TV service has fans feeling increasingly anxious.
That's the vibe on social media, and it is not an overreaction. The Mariners' TV situation was a black box one week out from Opening Day, and that remains the case with the club set to open against the Cleveland Guardians tomorrow.
In case anyone needs catching up, ROOT Sports is no more and Mariners broadcasts are now being handled by Major League Baseball. There will be something called "Mariners TV" for cable subscribers, but there is no clear information beyond that.
Ryan Divish of The Seattle Times has been on this story like nobody else, and his latest intel dump from Saturday does have some positive tidbits worth cherry-picking.
One is that the Mariners have indicated Mariners TV will be as accessible in 2026 as ROOT Sports was in 2025. It should be on the same subscriber tier, meaning not basic cable but a higher one that includes sports packages.
Divish also notes that Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres fans were in the same boat last season, and that MLB did come through with clarity on both clubs' TV situation in time for Opening Day. The same will likely be true for the Mariners and other clubs this year, as Maury Brown of Forbes indicated:
For fans of the Nationals, Mariners, Brewers, Cardinals, Marlins, Rays, Reds, Royals, Tigers, and Braves that are awaiting channel announcements on where to find your teams on TV…
For planning purposes, these negotiations usually go down to the wire. Hearing that things are in…
The gist is this: If anyone watched the Mariners on ROOT Sports last year and still has the same cable package, the thing to do is just wait. The same setup should grant access to Mariners TV.
Even so, this doesn't change the fact that fans who are expecting providers like Comcast Xfinity, DirecTV, Spectrum and Fubo to carry Mariners TV don't have answers right now. Whether Mariners TV will indeed be available and what channel it will be on is simply unknown.
To be clear, this is an MLB problem and not a Mariners problem. The team isn't giving fans information because it doesn't have any information to give, as Divish noted in his report.
For anyone in the Pacific Northwest who'd just as soon buy their way out of the nonsense, Mariners.TV streaming packages go for $19.99 a month or $99.99 for the season. That's with no local blackouts, though it doesn't buy access to national broadcasts on FOX, NBC/Peacock or Apple TV — yeah, watching baseball has gotten hard and expensive.
Fans outside the Pacific Northwest, meanwhile, can access Mariners games via an MLB.TV subscription for $149 for the season.
For everyone else, this will likely be an "all's well that ends well" story as soon as Thursday morning. But that's also hardly a good excuse for such long-lasting uncertainty. It's needless, and it's no way to treat any fanbase.
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