Where can I watch the July 29, 2022, Tigers-Blue Jays game in Canada?

After a strong restart to their season after the All Star Game, the Toronto Blue Jays will continue their 2022 Major League Baseball (MLB) schedule with a homestand against the Detroit Tigers from Thursday to Sunday, July 28–31, 2022.

However, viewers in Canada should be aware that the Tigers–Jays game on Friday, July 29, 2022, with first pitch scheduled for 7:07 p.m. ET / 4:07 p.m. PT, will not be broadcast on Sportsnet.

Instead, this game will be available to stream for free as part of MLB's new Apple TV+ Friday Night Baseball package, with coverage starting at 6:30 p.m. ET / 3:30 p.m. PT, as announced by Apple on June 9. This means that in several countries including the United States and Canada, the only way to watch this game will be through the Apple TV app.

This is the third Blue Jays game in the 2022 season to be part of the Friday Night Baseball package – the team's May 27 game at the Los Angeles Angels, as well as the July 8 game at the Seattle Mariners, were also carried by Apple TV Plus. At least one more Blue Jays game, the Jays' August 19 game at the New York Yankees, will also be part of the FNB package this year.

Despite the games being branded as "Apple TV+" games, there is no subscription required (for now) to the Apple TV+ service in order to watch these exclusive games. Apple's initial announcements led us to believe that this might be phased out midway through the 2022 season, but so far, the company has continued to make all games free to watch, and it looks like this will remain the case at least through the end of August. That said, it remains very possible that games will be pulled behind the Apple TV+ paywall in future years.

For this July 29 game, the only requirements are that:

1. You sign in with an Apple ID. If you've ever bought anything on the iTunes Store or Apple App Store (or watched previous Friday Night Baseball games), you almost certainly have one already. If you do need to create one, you may be required to enter a credit card number, but at this time that card should not be charged if you only watch the Apple Friday Night Baseball games.
    
2. You have an Internet-connected device that supports the Apple TV app, which includes not only iPhones and iPads but a number of smart TV and streaming device platforms like Android TV, Roku and Samsung. Alternatively, on Windows PCs, Android phones, and some other devices where there is no app available, you can still watch through the Apple TV website, which you can access via this link.

If and when you do wish to subscribe to Apple TV+ – which offers a lot of other quality programming like Ted Lasso and Severance – the current subscription price in Canada is $5.99 per month, or $59.99 per year (both prices before applicable sales taxes), with free trials available to first-time subscribers.

The other games in the series – on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday – will be available on Sportsnet or Sportsnet One as usual. The Sunday game will also be part of the Peacock streaming service's MLB Sunday Leadoff package, but as Peacock is not officially available in Canada, that game's availability on Sportsnet in Canada will not be affected.

Aren't all Jays games supposed to be on Sportsnet?

Throughout the 162-game regular season, the vast majority of games featuring the Toronto Blue Jays – as the only MLB franchise in Canada – air across the country on the various channels of Sportsnet, the Canadian sports broadcaster owned by Rogers Communications, as is the Blue Jays franchise itself. (These games are also available to stream for subscribers via Sportsnet Now.)

This has been the case since the 2010 season, when Rogers bought back the remaining package of games that it had been selling to rival broadcaster TSN, in exchange for allowing TSN to air more non-Jays MLB games – following which Sportsnet frequently promoted itself as offering every Jays game.

That said, MLB has always had the contractual ability to pull games away from local broadcasters to accommodate league-wide deals, regardless of team (or for that matter channel) ownership. This is part of the reason why, for example, similar team-owned networks in the U.S., like the Yankees' YES Network or the Red Sox's NESN, have never carried all of their parent teams' games.

But because American channels like ESPN, FS1, and TBS, as well as certain streaming services like Peacock, do not directly operate in Canada, those channels' pacts with MLB – in the rare cases that they do cover Blue Jays games – do not affect the Jays games available on Sportsnet.

However, MLB has been increasingly testing the waters with online broadcasters like Facebook Watch, YouTube, and most recently Apple TV+. In all of these cases, the services operate internationally, and accordingly their exclusive rights have usually extended to multiple countries including the U.S. and Canada.

As a result, any games covered by these international streaming rights deals are not available for broadcast on Sportsnet, as the channel has acknowledged on this support page for Sportsnet Now, and has happened occasionally in past years for streaming-exclusive games on Facebook and YouTube.

To be abundantly clear, Rogers, Sportsnet, and the Blue Jays organization have no influence over which games are selected for Friday Night Baseball. The selections are, to our knowledge, made solely by Apple subject to the terms of its contract with MLB.

Who will be calling the game?

At present, the "early" games in the  Friday Night Baseball doubleheader are being called by play-by-play announcer Melanie Newman, analysts Chris Young and Russell Dorsey (who is replacing Hannah Keyser for the second half of the season), and reporter Tricia Whitaker (who appears to be similarly replacing Brooke Fletcher). The game production itself is handled by MLB Network, the organization's in-house media unit (and cable channel).

If you're a regular Blue Jays watcher but haven't watched any FNB games yet, you should probably manage your expectations, as reviews for the announcing have been mixed at best. MLB and Apple seem to have been trying a few off-the-beaten-path things to keep the attention of a wider audience, leading to some more diverse topics of conversation – but the graphics, at least, have been decent.

If you'd prefer commentary with more local flavour, you can tune into one of the Blue Jays' radio affiliates (like CJCL "Sportsnet 590 The Fan" in Toronto) on a regular radio, or the league's MLB Audio streaming package.

One other note: although Apple TV+ is normally a commercial-free service, these games do contain ad breaks at the times you'd usually see them during games, though (at least to date) these ad slots have been replaced in Canada by a "please stay tuned" slide.

So again, to reiterate, the only way to watch the July 29 Tigers–Blue Jays game in Canada – and most anywhere else – is on Apple TV+.

Significant revisions

This article was initially published on May 23, 2022. Versions of this article, rewritten to reflect upcoming games and other minor updates, were posted on:

• July 25, 2022 – for the July 29 Tigers–Blue Jays
• July 7, 2022 – for the July 8 Blue Jays–Mariners game
• May 23, 2022 – for the May 27 Blue Jays–Angels game