Although it was becoming increasingly expected, it was still a shock to the system to see ESPN choosing to part ways with Major League Baseball and opt out of their current MLB rights deal.
Given how long MLB and ESPN have been partnered together, the thought of one without the other is hard to fathom. So where did it all go sideways? While MLB has tried to spin it as best they can, the truth is that it seems likely that it was ESPN who pulled the plug, no longer seeing the value in their current agreement.
The gut punch comes at a time when baseball finally seemed to be on the upswing with the glowing response to rule changes that greatly helped the sport as a television product and a good season of ratings and attendance news.
And with the ESPN deal falling apart, superagent Scott Boras is laying the blame solely at the feet of the league’s powerbrokers.
Boras spoke to Sports Business Journal and unloaded on MLB representatives negotiating the various television rights deals. In his belief, as someone who has negotiated some huge contracts including Juan Soto’s mammoth $765 million deal with the New York Mets, that baseball is being let down by its representatives at the bargaining table with media companies.
“The most important thing that we need to talk about is revenues,” said Boras. “Because revenues make everybody happy. It increases franchise values. And the NBA TV contract tells you that we are a decade behind in our negotiation for media rights in baseball.”
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“Other leagues didn’t do that,” he continued. “And so when we talk about why our revenue streams are where they are, look at the TV contract and it says that we have got to better with our negotiation of the media rights.”
Therefore, Boras believes, MLB needs better representation at the bargaining table. He did not mention exactly who should take the job.
“The solution is a negotiator. This is about appropriate representation. And a rights structure. I think that’s why players hire me. So why wouldn’t MLB hire someone appropriately that knows how to handle that negotiation for them when they look at the NBA?” Boras said. “We have double the content and higher ratings, and we’re getting half of what the NBA gets? Does that not tell you that it’s not the product, it’s the representation.
“So that’s our biggest problem in baseball. Numero uno.”
It might be a tough pill for Major League Baseball to swallow, but there is definitely some merit to Scott Boras’ arguments, particularly when you look at the success that the league cited throughout 2024. Ratings were higher, attendance was higher, overall interest in the sport seemed to be higher. And yet… a longtime partner in ESPN is saying thanks but no thanks to Major League Baseball under their current parameters? It’s not a great endorsement of MLB leadership.
On the other hand, the NBA has struggled with load management, a generation of new stars, and ratings that are failing to inspire. And they received a huge rights fee increase from ESPN, NBC, and Amazon. The new NBA-ESPN deal is worth $2.6 billion per year and yet ESPN doesn’t even think its MLB package is worth $550 million? Sure, ESPN doesn’t have the World Series while it does have the NBA Finals, but that should send a shiver down the spine of anyone associated with baseball.
Another point that Boras makes is that baseball should be outpacing its competition in the streaming era. After all, MLB Advanced Media provided the technological platform for much of the sports world when the transition from linear to streaming was first developing. But instead of giving baseball a leg up on the competition, it seems to have been left behind in the dust.
Would MLB be in a better position if it had a famous pitbull like Scott Boras leading negotiations with ESPN and others? Maybe. At least it probably wouldn’t have signed the sweetheart deals like the one with Roku that devalued their inventory and helped lead to this predicament in the first place.
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