Bob Costas will host most, but not all, of NBC\u2019s 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\u2019s Sunday night games, beginning March 26\u00a0 when the Arizona Diamondbacks visit the Los Angeles Dodgers for Opening Day.<\/p>\n
NBC views Costas as someone who can connect the network\u2019s baseball past to its present, according to what he told the paper<\/a>, creating continuity between NBC\u2019s previous run with the sport and this new era that begins in just over three weeks.<\/p>\n The role Costas is playing, however, doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n NBC announced Costas would return in January<\/a> in what the network and Costas have consistently described as an \u201cemeritus role\u201d 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<\/a> after calling the 2024 ALDS for TBS, citing that his performance didn\u2019t meet his standards, following criticism on social media<\/a> for perceived lack of enthusiasm during the Yankees-Royals series.<\/p>\n The emeritus role Costas accepted is carefully constructed to avoid stepping on anyone else\u2019s responsibilities. Costas made clear on the Sports Media Watch Podcast earlier this year<\/a> that he won\u2019t be a studio host in the traditional sense. He\u2019ll never set foot in NBC\u2019s studio in Stamford, Connecticut, unless it\u2019s to record a voiceover. He will be on-site at every game he hosts, which will only be Sunday night games.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat will become clear, not just to people who follow it closely\u2026but to the average person of the viewing audience, it\u2019ll be clear that this is a carefully, and I hope, thoughtfully and intelligently crafted, emeritus role that will not usurp anyone else\u2019s role and will not involve anything that I\u2019ll do that people would say, \u2018Well, there\u2019s 10 other people who could or would do that,’\u201d Costas said on that podcast.<\/p>\n Ahmed Fareed will handle the actual studio hosting duties<\/a> for NBC\u2019s Sunday Night Baseball pregame show. Clayton Kershaw<\/a>, Anthony Rizzo<\/a>, and Joey Votto<\/a> round out the crew as pregame analysts, appearing for the Wild Card round and select regular-season games. Jason Benetti will\u00a0handle play-by-play<\/a> for Sunday Night Baseball, working alongside a rotating group of local analysts<\/a> with ties to the teams playing each week, mirroring NBC\u2019s approach with Sunday Leadoff on Peacock from 2022-23.<\/p>\n NBC\u2019s baseball package<\/a> 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<\/a>, 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<\/a> as part of the broader deal, creating a makeshift baseball doubleheader on most Sundays.<\/p>\n Costas hosting two-thirds of the pregame shows means he won\u2019t be working every Sunday night game NBC broadcasts. The network hasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bob Costas will host most, but not all, of NBC\u2019s pregame coverage for Sunday Night Baseball this season.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,9099,33941,13133],"class_list":{"0":"post-606795","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-bob-costas","10":"tag-mlb-on-nbc","11":"tag-sunday-night-baseball"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116174035715587750","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}