Frustrated Mariners fans left scrambling to find out how to watch the game

Opening day for perhaps the most anticipated season in Mariners history should’ve been a celebration for fans anxious to watch a team with World Series aspirations start a 162-game journey.

Instead, for many fans, it was a day of frustration, spent checking the channel guides on their televisions and constantly updating a website that was supposed to provide clarity to a simple question — what channel is the Mariners’ game on?

It wasn’t a simple answer to acquire for many fans, who spent the day on the phone with customer representatives from their cable provider or from MLB and the Mariners. Trying to determine how they would watch Thursday night’s game vs. the Guardians at T-Mobile Park became a tedious chore with minimal resolution. Some found out they needed to pay an extra $20 subscription fee and others found out that their provider wouldn’t be able to air games until March 31.

Most were nonplussed that they had to wait till the morning of opening day to figure out what should’ve been simple information.

For the last two decades, fans knew that simply tuning to ROOT Sports (Fox Sports Northwest before that) to watch the Mariners on most nights.

That changed when the Mariners decision to shutter their regional sports network late last season. The organization had already opted to have Major League Baseball handle the production duties of its game telecasts in 2025. With no ROOT Sports, the Mariners turned over the distribution rights for their game telecasts to MLB as well, joining 13 other teams under the same structure.

On January 29, the Mariners announced the creation of Mariners. TV — a streaming option that worked in conjunction with MLB.TV and Mariners TV, which would be the “network” that cable providers would show only game content with a brief pregame and postgame show, followed by a re-airing of the game. The rest of the time the channel would remain dark.

But at the time, the Mariners weren’t certain which cable systems would carry Mariners TV since MLB was handling all the negotiations for the airing rights to the providers.

From the press release in January: “Mariners TV will continue to be available through traditional cable and satellite providers, consistent with how fans have watched Mariners baseball in the past. Specific information on providers and channels will be announced once confirmed closer to Opening Day.”

As spring training days passed by and fans, who watched games via cable, grew restless with lack of clarity, MLB and the Mariners simply referred to the statement in the release instead of asking for patience or providing some semblance of assurance.

“Closer to opening day” essentially meant 5:09 a.m. PT on opening day when MLB released an email with website links for each of the 14 clubs where fans could determine what if their cable provider would carry their needed network and the channel number. The last-minute announcement shouldn’t have been a surprise since MLB did the same thing in 2025. The Mariners did release some channel information for a handful of providers starting Wednesday afternoon, which provided some pause to the growing angst.

But the Mariners’ site didn’t provide complete or immediate clarity on Thursday morning as channel and provider information was still being updated throughout the day. More perplexing for fans was that those channels listed weren’t on their cable guides immediately, while others found they had to pay an extra $20 per month to add Mariners TV to their cable package.

To be clear, this boondoggle is largely due to MLB’s process for negotiating and releasing the information. Fans, er consumers, for the other teams dealt similar frustrations. The Mariners, who want to build off the momentum, would’ve preferred to have the channel information available weeks ago, giving fans a chance to determine whether they continue to watch games via cable or cur the cord and got to the streaming package. This wasn’t ideal for anyone involved.

It doesn’t necessarily get better for those fans.

To make matters worse, the Mariners game on Friday was picked by Apple TV, meaning that fans, who found their channel on their cable system or fans, who paid for the streaming, can only watch if they have a subscription for Apple TV.

Oh and there’s more. Sunday’s series finale against the Guardians was picked up by NBC’s Sunday night baseball. The only problem is that they game won’t air on NBC, but on Peacock, NBC’s streaming service, which also requires a subscription.