The MLB debut on Netflix was met with plenty of criticism and critiques from viewers who tuned in for the Opening Night broadcast between the New York Yankees and San Francisco Giants. And the poster child for the streamer’s efforts was famed shirtless comedian Bert Kreischer.
The 53-year old has risen to stardom as a comedian after his famous tenure as a student at Florida State, where a Rolling Stone article became the inspiration for the cult classic Van Wilder. Since 2018, he has done several comedy specials for Netflix. And in their effort to self-promote their offerings to sports fans, Netflix has made him the unofficial poster child for the streamer by appearing at most of their live sports telecasts.
That included Wednesday night’s MLB debut where Kreischer was in McCovey Cove kayaking (without a shirt naturally) during the pregame show. He then quickly made his way inside the stadium where he served as an on-field pregame hype man in a Rob Manfred approved MLB hoodie. Kriescher actually wearing the hoodie was a bigger surprise than Paul Skenes not even lasting an inning against the Mets and having a 67.5 ERA after one start.
But was he the best choice to bridge the gap between baseball fans and the streaming giant in order to maintain and win subscribers? Dan Le Batard may think so, but he realizes most fans don’t feel the same way as he explained on Thursday’s edition of The Dan Le Batard Show,
“Baseball fans do not like their product bleeped with,” Le Batard said. “They are very protective about their product.”
Le Batard broke down the MLB-Netflix deal, highlighting that Opening Night is one of three productions that the streamer will have for the baseball season in addition to the Home Run Derby and Field of Dreams game. He then turned his attention to Kreischer.
“It appears that people are mad at Netflix because it’s not a traditional broadcast. This happened with Apple as well, this happened to Katie Nolan. Bert Kreischer evidently last night really annoyed people. Bert Kreischer can annoy people. And Bert Kreischer on your baseball broadcast is not something I would do. If Dennis Miller and Tony Kornheiser don’t work on the Monday Night Football broadcast and you think that is some kind of sacred, a comedian around baseball is just simply not gonna work on the broadcast, given what the customer base is,” Le Batard stated.
Le Batard says that as someone who has had Kreischer on his show before and is very familiar with his schtick. If you’re a fan of it that’s great. But there’s probably not a ton of crossover between baseball fans and Free Bert aficionados.
Netflix is not the first broadcaster to try to reach a new audience with comedians, guest stars, or trying to reinvent the wheel of sports broadcasting. But as history has shown, those efforts have gone down with a historically bad batting average. You can cite Dennis Miller and Tony Kornheiser and even Chris Berman calling major championship golf on ESPN. Still though, Le Batard thinks there is a place for comedians on baseball broadcasts because of the slow pace of the game and the ability for them to fill empty airtime.
“I’ve wanted changes in broadcasting for a long time, but when you make a change, and your customer base objects. Then what ESPN does is they go grab Joe Buck and Aikman, they make them the most expensive things, and they say please fix everything we’ve got going on here by just making it the most traditional of things. That’s what fans want. If you’re inviting the streaming services into the game, if they represent the future of all of this because you see that some of these regional networks are falling apart because they need the help of the big daddies here, you’ve got to allow them to change some of what it is that you’re doing in the future,” Le Batard added.
But he warned that baseball was not the sport to experiment with, even though he sees it as a great opportunity.
“But you can only push the envelope so much, and you can’t do it with baseball fans. Baseball fans are the last place that want a comedian around their broadcast. But it’s the first place in sports that I want a comedian around the broadcast because the comedian has plenty of room to stretch out during a baseball broadcast.”
