Bob Costas will host most, but not all, of NBC’s pregame coverage for Sunday Night Baseball this season. The 73-year-old broadcasting legend told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the plan is for him to handle about two-thirds of the pregame shows leading up to NBC’s Sunday night games, beginning March 26  when the Arizona Diamondbacks visit the Los Angeles Dodgers for Opening Day.

NBC views Costas as someone who can connect the network’s baseball past to its present, according to what he told the paper, creating continuity between NBC’s previous run with the sport and this new era that begins in just over three weeks.

The role Costas is playing, however, doesn’t give him much time to work with on most nights. He said the typical pregame window is about 12 minutes of actual content, which is considerably tighter than what ESPN ran for Sunday Night Baseball. ESPN’s pregame coverage often ran 30 minutes or longer, depending on the matchup. NBC is going shorter, which means Costas will need to make those 12 minutes count. He emphasized to the Inquirer that even with limited time, the goal is to make the pregame worthwhile rather than just filling space before the first pitch.

NBC announced Costas would return in January in what the network and Costas have consistently described as an “emeritus role” designed to wind down his broadcasting career where it began. Costas spent 40 years at NBC before quietly departing in 2018. He retired from play-by-play after calling the 2024 ALDS for TBS, citing that his performance didn’t meet his standards, following criticism on social media for perceived lack of enthusiasm during the Yankees-Royals series.

The emeritus role Costas accepted is carefully constructed to avoid stepping on anyone else’s responsibilities. Costas made clear on the Sports Media Watch Podcast earlier this year that he won’t be a studio host in the traditional sense. He’ll never set foot in NBC’s studio in Stamford, Connecticut, unless it’s to record a voiceover. He will be on-site at every game he hosts, which will only be Sunday night games.

“What will become clear, not just to people who follow it closely…but to the average person of the viewing audience, it’ll be clear that this is a carefully, and I hope, thoughtfully and intelligently crafted, emeritus role that will not usurp anyone else’s role and will not involve anything that I’ll do that people would say, ‘Well, there’s 10 other people who could or would do that,’” Costas said on that podcast.

Ahmed Fareed will handle the actual studio hosting duties for NBC’s Sunday Night Baseball pregame show. Clayton Kershaw, Anthony Rizzo, and Joey Votto round out the crew as pregame analysts, appearing for the Wild Card round and select regular-season games. Jason Benetti will handle play-by-play for Sunday Night Baseball, working alongside a rotating group of local analysts with ties to the teams playing each week, mirroring NBC’s approach with Sunday Leadoff on Peacock from 2022-23.

NBC’s baseball package includes 25 Sunday Night Baseball games per season, the entire Wild Card round, exclusive primetime slots on Opening Day and Labor Day, and the 18-game Sunday Leadoff package on Peacock. The network created Sunday Leadoff for Peacock in 2022, paying $30 million annually for 18 Sunday-morning and early-afternoon games. NBC let that deal expire after 2023, and Roku picked it up in 2024 for just $10 million per year. When NBC secured Sunday Night Baseball rights in late 2025, it reclaimed the Sunday morning package as part of the broader deal, creating a makeshift baseball doubleheader on most Sundays.

Costas hosting two-thirds of the pregame shows means he won’t be working every Sunday night game NBC broadcasts. The network hasn’t announced who will fill in for the other third, but with Fareed hosting the studio portion and Costas working on-site, a natural division would have Fareed handling some weeks entirely from Stamford while Costas takes others from the ballpark.