25 Facts About MLB

MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada.

MLB has the highest total season attendance of any sports league in the world with more than 69.

MLB oversees Minor League Baseball, which comprises lower-tier teams affiliated with the major league clubs.

MLB is the second-wealthiest professional sport league by revenue after the National Football League.

MLB maintains a unique, controlling relationship over the sport, including most aspects of Minor League Baseball.

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Multimedia branch of MLB is MLB Advanced Media, which is based in New York City.

MLB Productions is a similarly structured wing of the league, focusing on video and traditional broadcast media.

MLB owns 67 percent of MLB Network, with the other 33 percent split between several cable operators and satellite provider DirecTV.

In early 1997, MLB decided to assign one new team to each league: Tampa Bay joined the AL and Arizona joined the NL.

In 2000, the AL and NL were dissolved as legal entities, and MLB became a single, overall league de jure, similar to the National Football League, National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Hockey League (NHL)—albeit with two components called "leagues" instead of "conferences".

For professional baseball's founding year, MLB uses the year 1869—when the first professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, was established.

However, MLB rosters did not include any black players through the end of the war.

MLB selected Jackie Robinson from a list of promising Negro league players.

MLB banned the signing of women to contracts in 1952, but that ban was lifted in 1992.

Several MLB teams had been considered for elimination in early talks about contraction, but the Montreal Expos and the Minnesota Twins were the two teams that came closest to folding under the plan.

Plans for MLB contraction were halted when the Twins landlord was awarded a court injunction that required the team to play its 2002 home games at their stadium.

MLB owners agreed to hold off on reducing the league's size until at least 2006.

In June 2021, MLB announced a long-term deal with cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which includes the FTX logo appearing on umpire uniforms during all matches.

Since 1986 an All-Star team from MLB is sent to a biennial end-of-the-season tour of Japan, dubbed as MLB Japan All-Star Series, playing exhibition games in a best-of format against the All-Stars from Nippon Professional Baseball or recently as of 2014 their national team Samurai Japan.

In 2008, MLB played the MLB China Series in the People's Republic of China.

MLB played the MLB Taiwan All-Star Series in Taiwan in November 2011.

In October 2013, Phil Rogers of the Chicago Tribune wrote that MLB was considering postseason all-star tours in Taiwan and Korea; baseball is increasing in popularity in both countries.

In January 2009, MLB launched the MLB Network, featuring news and coverage from around the league, and airing 26 live games in the 2009 season.

In 2022, MLB made a deal with Apple Inc to launch Friday Night Baseball on its Apple TV+ streaming service, and NBC Sports to broadcast MLB Sunday Leadoff, a package of early Sunday afternoon games on Peacock.

MLB's streaming internet video service is subject to the same blackout rules.

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