The Major League Baseball (MLB) Players Association just started making its own original shows. On June 9, MLB Players Inc., the union’s business and licensing arm, launched MLB Players Studio, a platform for original programming built around individual players rather than teams or the league itself. Portal A, a YouTube-native production company, is building it.

MLB Players Inc. tapped Portal A on a specific bet: the union’s members are already better positioned to reach fans directly than the league or their own teams are. 

“Athletes are owning their audience more than ever before,” says Nate Houghteling, Portal A co-founder. “It’s really all about the athletes directly, so by being part of that, brands can go directly to the fans through the athletes.” That thesis, more than any single relationship, is what the deal is built on.

Nate has been betting on that shift since before it had a name. He co-founded Portal A in 2008 after leaving a communications role at News Corporation, convinced that traditional media wasn’t taking YouTube seriously enough. His two co-founders, Zach Blume and Kai Hasson, came from similar places, one from political consulting, another from Current TV in San Francisco, and the three had already made web series together, including one shot in Asia right after college.

Nearly two decades later, Portal A operates remotely with hubs in San Francisco and Los Angeles, making original and branded video for brands including Google, Target, and Toyota, and for athletes including Stephen Curry, Anthony Edwards, Carmelo Anthony, Odell Beckham Jr., and, most recently, tennis player Ben Shelton, whose real-time YouTube documentary, “The Long Game,” the company released this year. 

MLB Players Inc. is betting that the same approach can hold across an entire union’s membership, not just a handful of marquee names, and it has hired Portal A to help prove it.

Fans Follow the Player and the Union Noticed

Most MLB players already run their own Instagram accounts, and a growing number post regularly to YouTube. Nate argues that the shift has changed who holds fans’ attention. “The way that fans interact with the game now is in large part following their favorite athletes,” he says, “in some ways more than the league itself or the teams.”

MLB Players Inc. arrived at a similar conclusion on its own, according to Nate, which is what opened the door to the partnership. “They understand that creating content is going to be a big part of the future of the Players Association,” he says, “and they want to be more proactive in working with their athletes around content.”

The studio is still in what Nate calls a build phase, developing formats and identifying brand relationships, with content expected to start rolling out later this year.

Portal A Is Pitching Partnership Over the Spokesperson Model

Traditional sports advertising, in Nate’s telling, still runs on a simple transaction: a brand pays an athlete to wear a logo or appear in a commercial. Portal A’s approach is built differently, with the athlete effectively co-producing the show.

“Our content is more of a partnership between the athlete and the brand, and they sort of co-create the show with the athlete really leading,” Nate says. The athlete ends up personally invested in what gets made, he argues, which makes them more likely to promote it, and that in turn benefits the brand attached to it.

That model requires less coaching than it might sound like. Nate says Portal A isn’t planning media training for the players involved, since most professional athletes have already built real fluency on camera through their own social accounts.

Athlete Content Still Trades Below What It’s Worth

Nate agrees with a premise that’s become common among people who work with athletes commercially: player content is worth more than brands currently pay for it, relative to the audience and engagement athletes actually control.

“Right now, the main way that athletes get paid by brands is through endorsement deals,” he says, “and endorsement deals are always going to be part of the mix.” But he sees more unrealized value in content partnerships specifically, in part because fans notice the difference between an obligation and something an athlete actually cares about.

“A fan of an athlete can tell what project is just a check for them and what project is something that they’re passionate about,” Nate says. MLB Players Studio, built as a standing content operation rather than a string of one-off endorsement deals, is one attempt to capture more of that value on the union’s behalf.

Competing With Other Sports Leagues

Nate doesn’t frame MLB Players Studio as the first league to figure this out. He points to two leagues already ahead of it. “The NFL has been at the forefront of creating content for YouTube and working with their athletes on content,” he says. “The NBA also does a very good job in some ways. The MLB is like behind those other leagues.”

That lag behind its peer leagues is part of the opportunity Portal A is positioning itself around. Nate says he would be open to replicating the model with other leagues if MLB Players Studio works, treating Portal A less like a one-league specialist and more like reusable infrastructure. “There’s a lot of opportunity out there,” he says.

The First Slate Mixes Documentary Ambition With Made-for-TikTok Volume

According to MLB Players Inc., four series concepts are in early development under the studio’s banner. 

“Catching Up” pairs a comedian with a player for a long-toss interview format. “Set Up Man” is a prank series built around real dugout antics. “6th Tool Sessions” turns cameras on players’ off-field hobbies, from woodworking to Pokémon collecting. “Lore Drop” compiles oral histories of memorable off-field moments in league history, built for TikTok.

Nate describes his three-year hope for the slate in similarly wide terms: something ranging from a scripted series that’s “extremely premium” to content that “comes out every single day and feels very lightweight and perfect for social,” pulling in players from across the league and brands “from really Fortune 100 brands … all the way down to more like insurgent startup brands.”

None of the four concepts is finalized. MLB Players Inc. and Portal A have said only that they plan to bring the slate to market in the second half of 2026.

The Model Nate Wants to See Copied

Nate says YouTube’s move into the mainstream over the past two or three years hasn’t made him feel like the opportunity is closing. He points to viewership now exceeding that of many streaming services combined, and to YouTube’s position as the top platform for in-home viewing even without counting mobile use, as evidence that “it still feels like the early innings.”

The bigger bet sits with the union itself. If MLB Players Studio works the way Nate describes it, MLB Players Inc. won’t just have produced a slate of shows. It will have made the case that a union’s business arm can double as a media company, one other leagues’ player associations might want to copy. 

“It positions the players’ association,” Nate says, “as the organizing force behind all of that.”

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