MLB Opening Day has finally arrived and plenty of brands are lining up to take advantage of the attention now being put on baseball. Fox has sold more than 90% of its ad inventory for its MLB games this year, and there’s reportedly a rush to buy space on the regional sports networks that air games.

Among the brands buying air time is Buffalo Wild Wings, who has a 60-second spot that will debut during the Washington Nationals-New York Yankees game on ESPN tonight. Hankook Tire is launching two commercials featuring Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw that will air on ESPN, Fox, and MLB Network.

An estimated $217.7 million in advertising is normally spent across Fox, Fox Sports 1, TBS, MLB Network, and ESPN for the 162-game slate. Advertising revenue in May was down 31%, largely because of the lack of sports on TV.

Along with the commercial breaks, there will be plenty of new ad space on the field and in the stands. Teams are allowed to place ads – real or virtual – on the back of the pitcher’s mound, behind home plate, in foul territory down the first-base line, in the on deck circle, and on tarps in the stands.

Other MLB News: 

— MLB and the MLB Players Association are reportedly reengaged in talks to expand the playoffs to 16 teams. A deal has to be in place before the first pitch tonight, but it could add millions in extra ad revenue to help make up for the fewer games.

— The Toronto Blue Jays are still without a home park after both the Canadian and Pennsylvanian governments denied their requests. Buffalo’s Sahlen Field, the home of the team’s Triple-A affiliate, is reportedly back on table while Baltimore’s Camden Yards could be in the mix as well.

— The Los Angeles Dodgers have signed outfielder Mookie Betts to a 12-year, $365 million extension. It’s the second-largest MLB contract ever, behind the $426.5 million deal Mike Trout signed last spring with the Los Angeles Angels.

Twitch is launching a new sports category as it continues its push into non-video game content. The category will be home to existing NBA, NHL, NWSL, and UFC content already on the platform. European soccer teams Arsenal, Real Madrid, Juventus, and Paris Saint-Germain will also join with their own streams and channels. It is also launching its own ‘twitchsports’ channel that will highlight broadcasts and content on the platform.

Amazon, which acquired Twitch for nearly $1 billion in 2014, streams Thursday Night Football and the English Premier League in the U.K. on the platform. Twitch controls 76% of the live-streaming market with 17.5 million daily users and could prove to be a useful tool as Amazon pushes further into sports broadcasting.

There has been an increase in Amazon job listings focused on adding live programming to Prime Video, which could help separate it from on-demand video services like Netflix. Amazon also recently started streaming live news channels through its Fire TV devices.

Sports have traditionally kept consumers tethered to cable subscriptions, but the pandemic’s forced hiatus could accelerate the shift of sports rights to streaming networks and platforms like Twitch – especially as traditional rights holders are using sports as a way to drive subscribers to their own OTT services like NBCUniversal’s Peacock and CBS’s CBS All Access.

Nike is shifting its executive team and cutting jobs as the company looks to further focus its efforts on its digital business amid a drop in retail sales due to the coronavirus pandemic. The apparel and sneaker giant posted a net loss of $790 million and a 38% decline in sales year-over-year in its most recent quarter, a period in which a majority of its stores across the globe were closed or operating at reduced hours. 

Under a new strategy that Nike is calling ‘Consumer Direct Acceleration,’ it will continue its push to sell more products directly to customers through its website and digital platforms. Nike has leaned into its training and exercise apps during the pandemic to connect with at-home athletes – those platforms also have e-commerce tie-ins. Roughly 30% of Nike’s revenue in its last quarter came from digital sales, an increase of 75% year-over-year.

These changes will lead to a “net loss of jobs across the company” which will result in a one-time employee termination cost of between $200 to $250 million, Nike said in a statement. It is unclear how much downsizing will occur. Nike had roughly 76,700 employees worldwide as of May 31. The company is creating a new ‘consumer creation’ division, shifting several executives to oversee its men’s, women’s, and children’s businesses. 

The last few months have not been kind to the sneaker industry. Footwear sales in the U.S. totaled $1.7 billion in the second quarter, down 48% from 2020, according to the NPD Group.

WAVE.tv recently closed a $32 million Series A funding round, bringing the media company’s total fundraising to $40 million and valuing it between $50 million and $100 million. The company has become the fourth-largest sports media property in digital reach generating 3.5 billion monthly views across a variety of social media platforms reaching 200 million fans monthly. Primary investor CoVenture was joined by GPS Partners, Golden Ventures, and Sweet Capital in this most recent round.

Founded in 2017, WAVE.tv is taking a different approach to growing its media footprint, creating several brands focusing on different sports as opposed to one overarching brand. The company produces programming for platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube. It also signed a partnership in June to distribute IMG Media’s content on its platforms. In the past several months, the company has seen its revenue increase 75%.

As WAVE.tv continues to grow, so too does its prospective consumer base. During the quarantine, 48% of 13- to 39-year-olds watched more videos on social media – with 40% watching videos weekly or more frequently on Instagram.

With the Series A funding, WAVE.tv is set to focus on developing its brands – that range from covering the Big Four leagues to amateur athletics – onto new platforms while also pushing into e-commerce and sports betting.