SEATTLE – While Logan Gilbert dotted a 97-mph fastball on the inside corner of the plate to kick off the 2025 season, a crew of Mariners and Root Sports employees manned a “command center” inside T-Mobile Park. It was 7:10 p.m. on March 27, and they were positioned there for a purpose: to tend to the team’s most anticipated offseason acquisition …
The Root Sports Stream app.
Though fans would have preferred a power-hitting first baseman claim that crown, a direct-to-consumer streaming option was long coveted as well. That’s due to MLB TV’s despised local blackouts, a continued wave of cord-cutting and Comcast’s decision to move Root Sports to a more expensive subscription tier.
All of which made the Mariners more difficult to watch in Seattle than maybe anywhere else.
On March 21, the Mariners and Root Sports ended the agony – unveiling a direct-to-consumer app accessible without blackout restrictions or a cable subscription. For $19.99 a month, fans in the team’s TV footprint – Washington, Oregon, Montana, Alaska and parts of Idaho – could access all of Root Sports’ daily programming, as well as on-demand highlights and game replays.
The announcement was met with a monsoon of manic relief and disbelief.
But, the bigger question: Would the app work?
The answer arrived on opening day, in the aforementioned “command center” – which sounds like it belongs on a “Star Trek” set.
“It was in a bunker very deep within T-Mobile Park. I wouldn’t be able to tell you (where),” Mariners senior vice president of marketing and communications Gregg Greene joked. “You need a lot of security clearance to get there. They wore jumpsuits. It was very high-tech.”
He laughed and happily dropped the facade.
“No, we had a booth in the ballpark.”
The goal, Greene said, was “to monitor social media so we could react in real time to any issues that arose within the app, knowing it hadn’t been tested in this manner. There were some bugs to squash on opening day. But overall, the app worked. People got to watch the game. People got to watch the Mariners win on opening day. And for that, it was a win for us as well.”
The wins have kept on coming. The Mariners (22-14) have used nine consecutive series wins to take a three-game lead in the AL West, and welcome the Blue Jays this weekend to kick off a six-game homestand. The Root Sports Stream app has also drawn favorable feedback, earning a 4.2/5 rating with roughly 1,000 reviews in the Apple App Store and a 3.7 rating with 289 reviews and more than 10,000 downloads on Android alone.
Though the team declined to divulge specific download/subscription numbers, Mariners senior manager of communications Adam Gresch said in a statement: “We’re very pleased to see how popular the app has been so far. Mariners fans told us they wanted the option to watch games this way, and the sign-ups certainly reflect that.”
Still, the app’s mere existence was not inevitable. Because many teams’ revenues were long tethered to local TV deals, MLB was reluctant to allow more affordable avenues. But corroding cable subscriptions and the damning domino effect on regional sports networks (RSNs) altered that equation, and the Mariners became the 27th team to offer a direct-to-consumer streaming option.
Last month, Root Sports vice president of affiliate and RSN operations Sabrina Taylor confirmed the launch of such an app “has been a conversation (internally) for years.”
The Mariners and Root Sports employed a vendor, streaming platform ViewLift, to help tackle the app’s technological aspects.
But it took testing – lots of testing – to beat a looming opening-day deadline.
“It was fun, during the process as we started to get beta testing options on the app, to spread out across Root and Mariners (employees) to make sure we were testing on all the different platforms that fans could have the option to use,” Greene said. “Each of us were fanning out and making sure we had Fire TV (covered). We obviously had both Apple and Android devices and all the different areas where we could ensure it would work for our fans beforehand.
“The goal the whole way was to make sure when the first pitch was thrown on opening day that fans would have a clear picture of Mariners baseball through the app.”
When the season started, the app streamed – even in the air. Though the Root Sports Stream app is typically available only in the team’s TV footprint, travelers can use “couch rights” to stream outside that territory for a 30-day period. Which is how Taylor’s husband watched the Mariners’ 4-2 opening-day win while on an airplane.
Even now, it isn’t perfect. There have been four updates to address “bug fixes,” and this columnist can attest to occasional buffering blips. And while the app is available on most devices, Samsung smart TVs are not included on that list.
“Of course, as we get through the season we’re going to find things that we want to make better, and we will do that,” Taylor said.
“We will look for fan feedback. But in general, the overall stream and the quality of it working seamlessly … it worked.”
It worked – on Safari and Chrome and Windows, on iPhones and iPads, on Androids and Apple TVs, in households that cut the cord and airplanes with Wi-Fi.
Bugs and future fan feedback aside, the fact that we can say all that is a start.
“I’ve been able to pull up the app on myriad different devices that I have – using it at home, using it at the ballpark, using it when I’m on the road,” Greene said. “It just has a lot of flexibility. It’s on mobile. I can jump to my tablet or my PC. I have a Fire TV that I stream to as well.
“It’s simple. It’s easy to use across a lot of different platforms. It gets me to Mariners baseball, which is what I want.”
It’s a good time to get to Mariners baseball.
You don’t need a seat in the command center, or a cable subscription, to see that.