MLB & ESPN parting ways after 35 years (1990-2025)

[mson]

Baseball is about to really find out that they don't love u like that. They been in free fall for a long time. They were part of the fabric of America for a long time. But they've been replaced by the NFL and NBA and it's been that way since really the 90s.i think it's one of those things where you so far ahead that ppl don't notice the fall until it suddenly hits the bottom. Welcome to the bottom MLB, the NBA will experience this too in the coming yrs after the new massive TV deals they just signed expire. Those deals were on the backs of LeBron, Steph, KD. They had better find a new American superstar really soon. They are more global than MLB though, but that ain't enough to sustain the leagues current popularity which is already suffering and slipping. They need for Cooper Flagg to pan out.

I doubt the NBA will experience the same thing. But time will tell.

 

[prime]

If mlb was smart they would take a chance with the CW like nfl did with fox but with no mlb on espn we can get UFL Sunday night football let's get it

 

[Thavoiceofthevoiceless]

If mlb was smart they would take a chance with the CW like nfl did with fox but with no mlb on espn we can get UFL Sunday night football let's get it

The CW doesn't have that type of bread compared to other network stations

 

[K-Apps]

The CW doesn't have that type of bread compared to other network stations

I could see CW at least making a bid, why not if the money at 250-300 or even less. Unless Amazon or Netflix come in, I don’t see where MLB gets a good value deal

 

[Osmar]

MLB contract is for 30 regular season games, the HR derby, and Wildcard round

NBA contract is for the 80 regular season games, NBA Playoffs, Conference Finals, and NBA finals,

This page stole this word for word from Clay Travis, it is not really a 1 to 1 comparison

 

[HandyWithTheSteel]

The MLB deal gives them 30 regular season games and 1st round of the playoffs. The NBA deal gives them the Finals.

They were overpaying the MLB for what they were getting.

ESPN has been giving bags to NFL, NBA, NHL, and College Football but of course they focus on NBA since ‘90s stans have given them the green light to attack the league.

 

[Thavoiceofthevoiceless]

I could see CW at least making a bid, why not if the money at 250-300 or even less. Unless Amazon or Netflix come in, I don’t see where MLB gets a good value deal

That would require them spending money, which this new regime have shown that they're hesitant to do especially since the ROI wouldn't justify the cost.

 

[Remote]

Marchand brings up some good points.

I'm against ESPN on this because they don't promote the game well enough. That's a fan perspective.

But from business perspective, maybe this was a bit more delicate and MLB may regret this.

Listen to this instead.

 

[zayk35]

I doubt the NBA will experience the same thing. But time will tell.

I think so, just look at what's being said about the NBA today. So far this season has been nothing but "shyt on the NBA" conversations left and right. You already know they on some with the NBA in the 1st place, the average salary is 11 million guaranteed dollars a year. So they already think it ain't nothing but a bunch of overpaid nikkaz in the 1st place. Then with a lot of the current best players being foreign, American xenophobia kicks in big time.

 

[LDC]

If Ohtani wanted to learn English he would have learned it by now. Acuña is now doing interviews in English without his translator.

Ohtani can speak English and does at times (the WS parade last year), but He does his interviews with translators for the majority of his fans in Japan. I get what you're saying tho because he's HERE in the US but a lot of the foreign players can speak English but choose not to mainly because since it's not their native language, they don't want to say something wrong and be misinterpreted. --->See the Jorge Lopez post game interview that got him cut from the Mets last year.

 

[K-Apps]

Weeks ago, long before the news leaked to The Athletic or any defiant press release was issued, Jimmy Pitarovisited Rob Manfred to deliver the news in person that ESPN was likely going to opt out of the last three years of its broadcast deal with Major League Baseball. The ESPN chairman didn’t want to get out of baseball entirely, but he did want to work out a deal that either resulted in a lower rights fee payment, or additional programming—like local rights streams or bringing back midweek games for linear and streaming—for roughly the same amount, about $550 million per year.
Pitaro and Manfred had always had a good working relationship. Indeed, the commissioner had hosted Pitaro’s senior executive team at the World Series in October. But when Pitaro started to bring up potential contract changes, Manfred stopped him and indicated that he couldn’t be asked for a chit he couldn’t deliver. Baseball’s owners, after all, were already irritated with executives in Bristol. Back in 2021, when it signed its current deal, ESPN gave up weekday MLB games, allowing the network to negotiate downward its $750 million per year deal to an average of $550 million. MLB couldn’t allow ESPN to negotiate a lower rate again, especially not after Manfred and team owners watched ESPN pay handsome increases to keep the NFL ($2.7 billion per year), NBA ($2.6 billion), and College Football Playoff ($1.3 billion).
Plus, Manfred believed he had leverage. He and his team had been speaking with other mediacos and were optimistic that MLB would find other bidders—surely for 2028, when the league’s national rights deals with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery expire. To that end, MLB has been talking to streamers like Amazon and Netflix, and has had informal talks with officials from Skydance, which is in the process of buying CBS (and streamer Paramount+). NBC has shown some interest as well. In any event, it appeared that MLB was keen to establish relationships with more media companies in advance of 2028, even if it meant accepting lower rights fees for the next few years. But Manfred was not going to take a lowball bid from ESPN back to his owners.
During their meeting, Manfred told Pitaro that if ESPN exercised its opt-out clause, MLB would take the rights to the open market. Pitaro understood the risks, but he also answered to Disney’s board, which had grown apoplectic over the rights deals MLB signed after 2021: Apple secured a package of Friday night games for around $85 million per year, and Roku picked up a package of Sunday morning games for $10 million annually. Sure, ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball was an exclusive window, compared to the Friday night and Sunday morning windows that have to compete with local games. But Disney and ESPN executives felt strongly that MLB had reset the rights market with those deals.
And, frankly, baseball was not as important to ESPN as it once had been. (ESPN canceled the studio show Baseball Tonight way back in 2017.) Executives in Bristol believed that they could put plenty of other sports in that Sunday night window that would do just as well: After all, NBA and NHL playoffs run through June, and the NFL and college football start in August. To plug the gap, was ESPN better off investing in smaller upstarts like TGL than relying on a league that had defined its past? Alas, these are the sorts of unsentimental decisions that drive the sports media business these days.

---

Flagship On Deck​

ESPN still liked being associated with baseball, however, and Bristol executives were hopeful they could work out a deal. Pitaro was also mindful of the direct-to-consumer service that ESPN plans to launch this fall, code-named Flagship, which would ideally carry local MLB streams. ESPN had told MLB executives that its weekly national MLB game on ESPN+ helped drive subscribers, and adding in local streams would facilitate Flagship’s launch.
Manfred and his owners were unmoved. If ESPN wanted to work out a new deal for the streaming rights, it would have to negotiate those separately. If ESPN exercised the out clause, it potentially would be ending the whole relationship.
Pitaro knew the risks last Thursday morning when he called Manfred to tell him that he would be exercising the out. Pitaro told Manfred that, per the contract, he would overnight an official letter formalizing the move.
Manfred subsequently sent his owners a memo saying that the upcoming season would be ESPN’s last with baseball. ESPN’s production of Sunday Night Baseball, the Home Run Derby, and the wild card playoff games would end after this year. The weekly ESPN+ game ended immediately.
Manfred’s letter to owners rankled some ESPNers for its aggressiveness, particularly when he bashed pay TV as a “shrinking platform.” After all, other pay TV channels that carry MLB playoff games, like FS1 and TBS, aren’t exactly growing in the streaming age. Anyway, sources tell me that ESPN is still willing to negotiate a new deal. Sources inside the league, however, suggest that MLB is hellbent on drawing more companies into the ’28 auction, even if it results in smaller, short-term deals for the Sunday Night Baseball package. Either way, this is certainly the most notable baseball divorce since Marilyn and DiMaggio… or at least the McCourts.

 

[FAH1223]

 

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