The Zac Brown Band will open NBC’s Sunday night Major League Baseball coverage when the Atlanta Braves host the Cleveland Guardians on Sunday, putting the three-time Grammy Award-winning group at the center of the network’s first Sunday Night Baseball broadcast. The opening will debut with a reimagined take on Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s “Karn Evil 9, 1st Impression Part 2.”
NBC Sports creative director Tripp Dixon said the choice worked because of the song’s organ and its first line, “Welcome back, my friends to the show that never ends,” a line that fit the sport because Major League Baseball is often called “The Show.” A couple of seconds from the opening were shown in March 2026 during NBC’s opening night broadcast between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Dodgers.
For Zac Brown, the placement marks a big stage for a band that has spent years building an audience far beyond country radio. Brown said it was “humbling” to have the band mentioned in the same breath as the names tied to NBC’s sports openings, and said the group put everything into the performance before seeing it come together with the visuals and production. He also said NBC Sports understood the energy the band was chasing and that the finished piece made him proud.
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The new opening arrives after Major League Baseball and NBC agreed in November 2025 to a three-year deal for Sunday night games and the wild-card round of the playoffs. The segment was shot in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, last month and is part of NBC Sports’ broader habit of pairing game coverage with well-known music and fresh versions of classic songs.
That puts the Zac Brown Band in a familiar NBC lineup, following Carrie Underwood’s Sunday Night Football opening, which she has done since 2013, and Lenny Kravitz’s Sunday Night Basketball opening built around Elvis Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation.” The network is not just borrowing star power; it is using songs people already know to make the start of a broadcast feel like an event. For NBC’s first Sunday Night Baseball game, that job now belongs to the Zac Brown Band.
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Brown said the collaboration felt genuine, but the larger point is simpler: NBC wants its baseball coverage to arrive with a recognizable sound, and on Sunday, it will.
