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Sports May 16, 2025
Shlomo Sprung
Shlomo Sprung

MLB Aims to Make Rivalry Weekend a Regular Season Main Staple

Jim McIsaac / Getty Images
MLB Chief Marketing Officer Uzma Rawn shares the details of baseball’s first-ever Rivalry Weekend and how it could become an annual tradition for America’s favorite pastime.

For the first time since Major League Baseball introduced interleague play in 1997, the sport’s biggest geographic and regional series are being contested simultaneously within Rivalry Weekend. From the Subway Series in the Bronx to the Freeway Series in Anaheim, the Crosstown Cup in Chicago, and the Silver Boot Series in Houston, baseball is ready to celebrate these matchups with promotional opportunities designed to help grow the game.

Over the last several years, MLB has tried bringing special events to elevate the 162-game, six-month-long regular season, including last year’s game at Birmingham’s Rickwood Field, the Field Of Dreams games in Iowa, the annual Little League Classic in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and this year’s Speedway Classic, where Atlanta and Cincinnati will battle at NASCAR’s Bristol Motor Speedway in August. It even attempted Players Weekend, where baseball tried special uniforms and even nicknames on the backs of jerseys to attract fans in the dog days of the season.

Like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and the Fourth of July, Rivalry Weekend serves as a chance for MLB and its clubs to lean in from a special event perspective and create additional ticket and revenue opportunities, whereas in the past, these series were spread across the regular season.

“Rivalries elicit such emotion from our fans, whether they’re diehard or casual fans,” Uzma Rawn, MLB’s Chief Marketing Officer, told Boardroom. “They provide that fiery passion that’s passed down from generation to generation. So we felt like it was a moment that we could aggregate all of the rivalries and really bring a moment in the schedule to life.”

Rivalry Weekend will be featured prominently on national TV, with Apple TV+ broadcasting Texas-Houston on Friday, Fox airing Atlanta-Boston and Minnesota-Milwaukee on Saturday, and ESPN televising Yankees-Mets on Sunday night as Juan Soto takes on his former team. MLB Network will also be showing games across the weekend, including the Crosstown Cup, Freeway Series, and the Battle of the Ohio Cup between Cleveland and Cincinnati. And while Seattle and San Diego aren’t natural enemies, the teams named their annual competition the Eddie Vedder Cup, since the legendary Pearl Jam rocker grew up in San Diego but made a professional name for himself in Seattle.

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Other promotional highlights from this weekend include:

  • MLB is hosting a Subway Series viewing party Friday at the Oculus in downtown Manhattan near the Freedom Tower.
  • The Red Sox are unveiling their new City Connect jerseys Friday prior to their game against the Braves, which played in Boston from 1871-1952 before moving to Milwaukee.
  • In the I-70 Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Royals, the Royals are celebrating their anniversary World Series championship teams from 2015 and 1985, the latter of which came against the Cards.
  • As part of the Beltway Series, famed Washington mascots Screech the Eagle and its Running Presidents will make the trip up to Baltimore for promotional and content opportunities.

MLB also partnered with Booking.com as Rivalry Weekend’s title sponsor, with Rawn describing the deal “as a way for them to really showcase their brand in a buzzworthy way that feels tied to a culture moment, in a moment that also where fans travel.” It will provide teams a chance to execute new promotions and activations at ballparks and on social media that the league hopes will motivate and inspire other teams to build on in the future.

“The weekend also allows us to bring in our younger demographic and other growth audiences as well,” Rawn added.

MLB is hopeful that these rivalries bring increased attendance and ticket sales, big TV ratings locally and nationally, and increased social media chatter throughout the weekend. Perhaps Rivalry Weekend becomes baseball’s next annual tradition as it looks to continue to elevate its regular season wherever and whenever possible.

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Shlomo Sprung

Shlomo Sprung is a Senior Staff Writer at Boardroom. He has more than a decade of experience in journalism, with past work appearing in Forbes, MLB.com, Awful Announcing, and The Sporting News. He graduated from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2011, and his Twitter and Spotify addictions are well under control. Just ask him.