The world of baseball broadcasts got a major shakeup this week when reports broke that ESPN and Major League Baseball were going their separate ways after 2025.
ESPN’s decades-long broadcasting relationship with MLB has been beneficial for both sides, and the Sunday Night Baseball window is still arguably the game’s most valuable. But commissioner Rob Manfred said in a memo sent to the league’s owners that they’d been disappointed in the lack of coverage from ESPN, outside that one weekly broadcast. And he’s right.
READ: ESPN Will No Longer Broadcast MLB Games
Still, the split was characterized as a mutual decision between the two sides. This weekend though, another new report broke, quoting ESPN sources, claiming that the broadcast network had unilaterally opted out of the deal.
“A source with knowledge of ESPN’s approach to the negotiations disputed the idea that the split was mutual,” CNN’s Kyle Feldscher reported. “The source told CNN that ESPN opted out of the contract and was surprised by commissioner Rob Manfred’s note to MLB owners that the league and network had mutually agreed to end their relationship.”
“The source noted that ESPN had an opt-out clause in the contract and decided to exercise it on Thursday.”
Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
ESPN’s Split From MLB A Bizarre Decision
Reportedly, ESPN approached MLB with a demand to lower its $550 million per year rights fee to broadcast Sunday Night Baseball and the MLB Wild Card series. The network compared its costs to Apple TV+’s $85 million deal and Roku’s $10 million agreement for Sunday morning games.
Those packages are obviously quite different from an exclusive Sunday primetime window, as well as a postseason package. But ESPN also just set $2 billion on fire with its agreement with the NBA, choosing to support a dying league because they share political ideologies.
Baseball is once again growing, with ratings and attendance increasing in recent seasons, including a big ratings bump for the World Series thanks to the Dodgers-Yankees matchup.
Maybe that package isn’t worth $550 million anymore, but now ESPN’s out of the baseball business, when baseball is actively increasing its audience. Seems like a bad business decision on ESPN’s part, but then again, ESPN has made plenty of those.
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