LOS ANGELES — MLB commissioner Rob Manfred called major league player involvement in the 2028 Olympics “a unique opportunity to market the sport worldwide” and sounded optimistic while talking through the logistics of how that might work when the Games come to L.A. in the summer of 2028.
“The way we’re thinking about it is it would be an extension of the All-Star break,” Manfred said Monday in an interview on ESPN Radio ahead of Game 3 of the World Series. “The All-Star break would begin, we’d play the All-Star Game, and then roll right into the Olympics thereafter. So it’d be probably 11 days of break, all in, something like that.”
MLB’s All-Star Game, traditionally on a Tuesday, would likely take place July 11 in 2028. Baseball in the Olympics is currently scheduled to be played July 15-20. If it works out, baseball’s regular season would pause for close to two weeks in the middle of July. Manfred reiterated to ESPN’s Jon Sciambi and Buster Olney that separating it into two breaks “gets really complicated” and would ultimately cause an even longer break with the additional travel days required.
Manfred also shed light Monday on MLB’s potential new rights deal with ESPN, which has yet to be announced, saying there will be “a Wednesday night package” while making reference to the league’s streaming arm, MLB.TV, being part of ESPN’s direct-to-consumer offerings.
“There’s gonna be integration in terms of local broadcasts that I think the folks at ESPN, and certainly we, look at as an experiment that can be really helpful to the game as we move forward in a rapidly changing environment,” Manfred said.
Asked what has him most excited about MLB at the moment, Manfred said, “International.” The 2025 season began in Japan, one year after beginning in South Korea. Next year, the World Baseball Classic will be played. And two years after that, the hope is that some of the world’s best baseball players will be taking part in the Olympics for the first time since 1992.
Casey Wasserman, chairman of the LA 2028 organizing committee, made what Manfred called “a really compelling presentation” to league owners on the subject, calling it a one-time opportunity with the Games being held in the United States. Manfred said MLB is “in the phase now of working with the players’ association to get them on board with the program.”
“It’s a unique opportunity to market the sport worldwide, and you ought to take advantage of it,” Manfred said. “So that’s why we’re continuing down the road. I think the owners really buy into that idea. It is a complicated path. We’ve made great progress with LA 2028 in terms of scheduling, exactly what the tournament would look like, how the qualifiers would look, how it would fit into the Olympic program.”
