Even with an enlarged, permanent stadium in Dyersville, Iowa, and the presence of Netflix, both MLB and the streaming giant said they intend to still let the famed setting “do the work” for the upcoming third iteration of the Field of Dreams game.
The league and Netflix are now going through final preparations for next week’s showcase Phillies-Twins game at the filming site of the 1989 Field of Dreams movie. The circumstances will be far different from the last such game there in 2022. Among the changes:
- The site, still a popular tourist destination, now includes a newly completed permanent stadium—seating about 8,000 people—and a large-scale youth baseball complex under its current owner, the non-profit Dyersville Events Inc. That development work has led to a series of permanent features, such as player locker rooms and redesigned seating, that advance significantly beyond the many temporary elements used for the MLB games there in 2021 and 2022.
- Netflix will now show the game exclusively and globally as part of a new rights deal completed last fall. Over-the-air broadcaster Fox aired those first two contests.
- A team from Chicago, the closest MLB market to Dyersville, is not involved. The White Sox faced the Yankees in the first Field of Dreams game and the Cubs played the Reds in the second one.
This will be a home game for the Twins, though, and part of Iowa is in their market territory.
Even with all these shifts, however, the event is still expected to lean directly into the nostalgia of the movie that inspired the games, and the unique farm setting around the field.
“The infrastructure that’s there now allows us to put a little more shine on the day-to-day experience on all the folks that will be there,” MLB SVP of global operations and events Jeremiah Yolkut said in response to a Front Office Sports question.
“What it didn’t do there, though, was take away from the authentic ways in which fans will come to the venue on the original field and walk through the corn, and … we now have a perfect blend of the nostalgia of the movie and being on a farm watching a baseball game, but having the creature comforts that people seek out when coming to big events,” Yolkut said.
The event, meanwhile, is expected to bring in 25 living Baseball Hall of Famers, each of whom will participate in a special pregame ceremony. That gathering is the largest such collection of Hall of Famers at an MLB game since the 2008 All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium, as such groupings are typically reserved for the shrine’s induction ceremony each July in Cooperstown, New York.
Next Test for Netflix
Netflix, meanwhile, gets another crack at a regular-season MLB game after a sometimes-troubled production for the league’s season-opening game in San Francisco, and a much stronger effort for last month’s Home Run Derby in Philadelphia.
“This is about us not overthinking this or trying to do too much,” said Netflix VP of sports Gabe Spitzer in response to FOS. “It’s a game that matters for these two teams in the playoff chase, it’s an iconic venue, and we want to let that do most of the work.”
Netflix will also be looking to build upon the viewership that Fox generated for the prior Field of Dreams games. The first one involving the Yankees and White Sox averaged 5.9 million viewers on Fox, representing the most-watched regular season game since 2005. A return the following year involving the Cubs and Reds dropped by nearly half, to an average of 3.1 million viewers, but still represented by far the high-water mark for MLB’s 2022 regular season, except for a game in Aaron Judge’s historic home-run chase later that year.
The streamer, however, averaged 3 million viewers for the 2026 MLB season opener and then 5.3 million for the Home Run Derby, suggesting that at least the audience figure from the 2022 Field of Dreams game is reachable.
Spitzer, meanwhile, declined to say what the exact role will be in the broadcast for actor Kevin Costner, star of the Field of Dreams movie.
“I don’t want to spoil any of the fun, but he’ll be part of our broadcast in some way. I can’t say whether he’s going to be there or not, but he’ll definitely show up [in the broadcast], and the movie will feel present,” Spitzer said.
