Major League Baseball has a right to be upset. Baseball Tonight which used to air several weeknights, shuttered. In-depth day-to-day baseball coverage on ESPN.com? Hard to find. Baseball conversation on ESPN streaming or television platforms? Harder to find, if it even exists. Highlights of meaningless home runs at 11 pm? ESPN has you covered.
Yet ESPN was paying MLB $550 million a season essentially for the rights to broadcast a marquee game one night per week (Sunday), 25 times a year.
Baseball as a talking point sport is hard for ESPN. The predominant sports media outlet in the United States much prefers the NFL, NBA and college football. ESPN fills the void with some college basketball and WNBA. Give ESPN credit for taking women’s basketball to heights many thought it could never go. But it’s baseball coverage? It’s been reduced to a Sunday night game.
Gone are the days of Jon Miller and Joe Morgan on Sunday night. Attention and media personalities to the sport from ESPN has dropped off.
Alex Rodriguez the superstar Yankee turned mega-business man and Yankee Broadcast Michael Kay gave it some life with their alternate K-Rod cast but that ended. As polished as a broadcaster Karl Ravoech is, as interesting as takes David Cone can provide and the magnetic personality of Eddie Perez, the current trio works for the baseball purist, but the excitement wanes.
This week it was announced by Major League Baseball that its agreement with ESPN for television rights fees will end after this season. Both sides had an opt out clause after this season. ESPN exercised it. It was baseball commissioner Rob Manfred who sent out a press release advising it was mutual.
Manfred cited ESPN wanted to greatly reduce its $550 million per season fee (per the Athletic) that it pays to sport to broadcast a game a week, a few playoff games and the Home Run derby. Baseball thinks it can find another partner who will be interested in riding the momentum baseball has had as of late. But ESPN walked away from MLB. MLB was unhappy with the coverage, but happy with the $550 million per.
MLB ball parks are filled mostly, and ticket prices are riding the funtainment inflation out of the pandemic. MLB viewership is up nationally. ESPN reported they averaged 1.5 million viewers for 25 games in 2024 for Sunday night baseball, which was up six percent from 2023 and the best Sunday night baseball rating since 2019.
And now the kicker-who is going to broadcast that Sunday night game? Sunday night in the summer is up for grabs. The watch anything sports fan TV has Sunday night free. Basketball and football are on the shelf. Auto Racing, Golf and tennis typically have concluded for the day. The M’s will fight it out, MLS and MLB.
ESPN streaming is really not the same as Amazon or Apple TV, most won’t pull up the ESPN app to watch the game, they will use their streaming provider’s app or cable provider’s app. ESPN is still very much a cable tv network which big rights fees which is carried by cable companies and live tv streamers such as YouTubeTV, Fubo and others.
ESPN the streaming app, although they have an ESPN+ offering, is still not a thing for its big broadcasts. That should change later this summer when ESPN pushes out its only streaming service which is expected to have all the ESPN networks live on an app for around $20-$35 monthly.
As Andrew Marchand of The Athletic reports, MLB has also devalued its national contract with ESPN as well with a hodge hodge of other streaming deals, Amazon, Apple TV and Roku among others all broadcast national MLB games. Still that Sunday night game has value, and MLB will seek to recoup that with a new contract.
So who picks up the MLB contract after 2025?
NBC
Mirror the success of the football night in America, into Baseball Night in America, and many fans and MLB executives would be jumping for joy. With NBC’s Peacock streaming platform, this would give baseball its most exposure.
Amazon
There are a lot of Amazon prime customers out there, but do the demographics align with potential Sunday night viewers. It would be hard to say. What Amazon has is a lot of money. A lot of it. 550 million is a not a lot of money in the Amazon world. MLB could get paid but lose some Sunday night viewers with a move to Amazon.
Turner Sports
There’s already a partnership there with TBS airing MLB games on Sunday afternoons for many years. It wouldn’t be that hard to spin up production. It just comes down to does Warner Bros-Discovery who owns Turner want to pay up?