Elle Duncan reveals Netflix’s Home Run Derby strategy

Elle Duncan is heading into her first Home Run Derby broadcast on July 13, and she isn’t there to be Netflix’s version of Chris Berman. As she explains it, calling the actual swings — and home runs — isn’t part of her assignment.

Duncan left ESPN in December to become Netflix’s first full-time sports broadcaster, and the Derby is only her second live MLB event in the role after anchoring Opening Night in March. She laid out exactly where she fits into Netflix’s plan for the broadcast on the Sports Media Watch podcast with Jon Lewis and Derek Futterman, describing a two-set format built specifically to keep her away from the play-by-play chair.

“The good news is I’m not actually calling the Derby, thankfully. That’s going to go to the great Matt Vasgersian, who is much more equipped to do that than me,” Duncan said. “I’m not being asked to do any of those things, or to call plays, which will be very new to me and foreign. We’re going to have two sets. I’ll be holding down our more loungey set, where I’ll be with Barry [Bonds] and Albert [Pujols], and we’ll be talking, having guests, getting their reaction.”

Netflix’s MLB rights deal, run in partnership with MLB Network’s production team, covers only three broadcasts a season, and each one has arrived with the same wall-to-wall star power. Opening Night in March, a standalone primetime leadoff game that MLB hadn’t scheduled since 2015, paired the Yankees and Giants at Oracle Park with Vasgersian on play-by-play, CC Sabathia and Hunter Pence in the booth, and Bonds, Pujols and Anthony Rizzo on the studio desk, with special appearances from comedian Bert Kreischer, New York Giants backup quarterback Jameis Winston, and WWE’s Jey and Jimmy Uso.

Netflix also landed that opener and the Derby in the same round of negotiations after ESPN and MLB agreed to a mutual opt-out on their previous rights deal. The package’s third event, the Field of Dreams Game on Aug. 13 — which Duncan hopes includes Kevin Costner — will pair the Twins and Phillies at the Iowa cornfield site.

The streamer takes over the Derby for the first time next week at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, ending ESPN’s run with the event that dated back to 1994. The streamer is in the first year of a three-year, roughly $50 million-per-year rights deal with MLB, an arrangement it landed after ESPN and MLB agreed to a mutual opt-out on their previous $550 million-per-year package three years early. ESPN’s final Derby broadcast last July drew heavy criticism for a split-screen camera angle that boxed the pitcher into one half of the frame while the batter and the ball’s flight got squeezed into the other, a decision that made it hard to actually watch Cal Raleigh become the first catcher to win the event. The broadcast still drew 5.73 million viewers, up 5% from 2024.

Netflix is also removing the swing clock for the first time since 2014, moving to a fixed allotment of 20 swings in the first round and 15 in each round after, with hitters allowed to keep swinging past their limit if they homer on the final cut of a round. The change comes after Netflix’s Opening Night broadcast earlier this season got mixed reviews of its own, and it appears aimed squarely at avoiding a repeat of the camera problems that defined ESPN’s exit.

“But, no, I don’t feel in general pressure for what it should look like, because Netflix is very clear about their ethos, which is: let’s do something that is very familiar to fans, but let’s do something very different,” Duncan continued. “Let’s make it a Netflix event. And they really want to differentiate themselves in these spaces by owning that. My partnership with Netflix is so perfect because I love sports, but I also love the entertainment aspect of sports. It’s always been adjacent, and I think the crossover has never been more clear, and that’s where Netflix lives. So it’s very much in my wheelhouse to take a major event like the Derby and figure out how do we make it fun, and do all those things. And then we let Matt and Hunter [Pence] and Anthony Rizzo own the other part of it, the more familiar part that you guys are used to seeing from legacy broadcasters.”