Major League Baseball has proposed cutting the regular season from 162 to 154 games and expanding the Division Series from best-of-five to best-of-seven, with both changes taking effect in 2029. The plan, tabled in collective bargaining with the MLB Players Association and confirmed on October 8, would also let higher seeds choose their opponents in the first two postseason rounds.
The timing is deliberate. The current collective bargaining agreement expires on December 1, and 2029 is the first season under the leagues next cycle of national media contracts. MLB has played 162 games since 1961 in the American League and 1962 in the National League, after a 154-game schedule from 1904 to 1960. League spokesperson Glen Caplin framed the change around a weekly off-day for player health, but also cited a new national broadcast window and fewer weekday afternoon games. Under the proposal, non-holiday Mondays would be dark except for one or two games in a national window, with teams playing that Monday given a Thursday off instead.
The commercial logic is a trade of volume for scarcity. Eight fewer games per club removes 120 regular-season games league-wide and four home dates per team, a direct hit to gate, concessions and local media inventory. In exchange, MLB creates a weekly national slot with little or no competing baseball, the kind of exclusive window that the NFL has monetised with Monday and Thursday nights, and adds up to two games to each of the four Division Series, the postseason inventory that draws the sports largest audiences. The league is reshaping the product to fit the next rights negotiation, putting fewer, more valuable games in front of national buyers rather than maximising the total number of telecasts.
The proposal also shows where bargaining is heading. The MLBPA said it is reviewing the plan but objected that MLB has tied every proposal to players accepting a salary cap, making schedule reform a bargaining chip in the cap fight rather than a standalone reform. For regional networks and club-run local media operations, a shorter season reduces the number of games they can sell at a time when local rights are already being restructured. For national partners, including ESPN, NBC, Netflix, Fox and TNT Sports, it previews a 2029 package built around exclusive windows and more postseason inventory. With a lockout widely expected after December 1, the schedule now becomes part of the labour dispute, and any agreement on it will shape what MLB can put to market for the 2029 cycle.
