On Thursday evening, reports surfaced that Major League Baseball and ESPN had “mutually agreed” to part ways following the 2025 MLB season.
Whether that decision was as mutual as Commissioner Rob Manfred made it out to be in his memo to MLB’s 30 owners is highly debatable. But what isn’t debatable is the ripple effect this decision will have on the sports media rights market and several media companies’ live sports content strategies in the coming years.
This piece will attempt to rank the most likely spots the league could take its newly available media rights, which include a premier package of exclusive regular season games in Sunday Night Baseball, the Wild Card round of the postseason, and key events like Opening Day and the Home Run Derby.
Per Manfred’s internal memo, MLB will be looking toward broadcast networks and streamers for its new deal to avoid the “shrinking platform” that is cable television.
So, without further ado, here are the possible landing spots for MLB beginning in the 2026 season:
1. Amazon/Prime Video
The streamer seems like a natural landing spot for MLB’s available inventory. Per John Ourand of Puck, Amazon has already had informal conversations with the league about ESPN’s old package, though the streamer still primarily has its eyes on 2028, when all of MLB’s national contracts come up, and there should be enough local rights available to bundle together some nationalized package.
When one looks at Amazon’s sports lineup come 2026, baseball would fit right in. Prime Video will have the rights to Thursday Night Football during the fall and winter and exclusive NBA games that will take them into the spring, but then nothing to fill its summer programming gap before TNF starts up again. Baseball, of course, could help fill this gap and mitigate churn for Prime Video.
But perhaps more importantly, if Amazon gets into the baseball business now, they have a foot in the door to gobble up their preferred local and national rights come 2028. The streamer has already shown plenty of interest in getting into business with MLB through an agreement with the FanDuel Sports Networks, which could make a short-term agreement for ESPN’s old inventory a logical next step.
2. NBC/Peacock
Like Amazon, NBC has a summer-sized programming gap to fill regarding Peacock, the network’s streaming service. Such programming gaps likely take on an outsized importance for NBC, who, unlike Amazon Prime, is purely reliant on its content to prevent churn. Baseball offers some flagship programming during a slow time of year and can nicely bridge the gap between the NBA and NFL seasons. For MLB, NBC can offer both the broadcast network and the streaming service that they seek.
However, NBC recently dropped its Sunday morning MLB package on Peacock, which it only paid $30 million per year for. This package will likely cost at least ten times more than that, but it also includes higher-quality inventory than its old semi-exclusive package, which is now housed on Roku.
So, while baseball might make sense from a churn-mitigation perspective, the financials will have to make sense for NBC, who will be spinning off its cash-flow juggernaut cable businesses in the next year. Peacock already finds itself well in the red, and adding even more expensive sports media rights to its portfolio might not satisfy investors from a P/L perspective.
3. CBS/Paramount+
CBS and its streaming service, Paramount+, might be an attractive option for MLB as, like NBC and Peacock, it would check both the streaming and broadcast network boxes. The wildcard here is Paramount’s new ownership situation. With Skydance prepared to take over, there may be more of an appetite to make a splashy play for sports rights, such as the premier regular season MLB package.
Once again, it’ll help summer churn between the conclusion of March Madness and football season — though Paramount already has a decent portfolio of summer sports programming with the PGA Tour and two golf majors. Baseball would certainly help bolster that programming lineup, especially during a down time for international soccer, which is Paramount+’s best churn-mitigation property throughout the rest of the year.
4. The CW or ION
Perhaps a sleeper pick in baseball’s search for a new rightsholder are the so-called “netlets” like The CW or ION. They both fulfill Manfred’s broadcast network desires, and might be willing to pay a premium as compared to the traditional media companies to gain a legitimate package with a “Big 4” North American sports league.
As Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch pointed out in his column on the matter, The CW recently drew 1.8 million viewers for its opening race of the NASCAR Xfinity Series last week — a number that beats out ESPN’s average Sunday Night Baseball audience from last season (1.5 million).
So, while signing on with a “netlet” might be an ego hit for MLB, they do provide the reach necessary to attract large audiences for live sports programming. Smaller leagues, like the WNBA on ION or the aforementioned Xfinity series, have certainly seen viewership success with this strategy. It’s something baseball should be open to at the right price.
5. Splitting the rights
There’s certainly a possibility that MLB decides to split up the rights. Perhaps Fox or Warner Bros. Discovery is interested in picking up additional postseason inventory. Maybe Netflix is interested in the Home Run Derby but not a full slate of regular-season games.
In fact, splitting the rights between multiple partners might be the only way the league can come close to the $550 million per year that ESPN was slated to pay over the remainder of its contract. It’s difficult to see any single media company shelling out that much for what amounts to 30-odd regular season games and the Wild Card round.
This is slotted last in the list since it’s a bit of a cop-out answer. But it might be the most likely scenario if Manfred’s primary goal is to recoup the financial windfall of ESPN’s deal.
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