Major League Baseball’s new media rights deal with ESPN, NBC and Netflix is nearly complete. The tentative agreement is likely going to cost fans more to see their favorite marquee events and MLB playoff games in October could take a back seat to the NFL’s ratings behemoth.
What is included in the new media rights deal?
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told Front Office Sports on Tuesday that the league has “agreements in principle” with the three companies to broadcast games for the next three years. The new media rights deal became necessary when ESPN opted out of its MLB package in February.
The sports network will keep a smaller regular-season package in the new deal for $200 million per season. Netflix is paying roughly $50 million per year to take over the ever-popular Home Run Derby, and NBC will pay $200 million to get Sunday Night Baseball. Manfred said adding up the terms of the new agreements gives the league roughly the same money they made when ESPN had all of those events under one roof.
“We feel like Sunday Night Baseball on broadcast television is important,” Manfred said. “You know, we’ve worked really hard to keep ESPN in as a partner, and we think starting with Netflix is a really exciting opportunity for us.”
What will fans need to do to see certain big events?
Fans will need a Netflix subscription for at least the month of July during the next three years to see Cal Raleigh, Kyle Schwarber and other MLB stars in the Home Run Derby. The streaming giant is following a plan straight out of its Christmas Day NFL playbook.
NBC adds baseball on Sunday night to a lineup that already includes Sunday Night Football and Sunday night NBA games. Sunday Night Football has been the highest-rated program on that night for 14 consecutive years. NBC Sports President Rick Cordella acknowledged the plan to own that specific day of the week is intentional.
“Having a great game of the week, with fantastic production story-telling, literally 50 weeks a year, is what we’ll have between the NFL, Major League Baseball, and the NBA,” Cordella said. “I don’t think it’s ever happened before in broadcast TV history, so we’re pretty excited about that.”
Baseball and basketball fans may not share that excitement. When the three sports overlap, as they will for most of the year, a subscription to Peacock will be required. Football is first in the pecking order on broadcast television, then the NBA, then Major League Baseball. The deal will also include some postseason baseball games, which could also conflict with Sunday Night Football.
When does this new deal end, and what happens then?
Manfred admitted that a shorter deal was “not his first choice,” though entering the market again in three years has “benefits.” This includes local broadcasting rights, with all 30 teams expected to be available by 2028, when all of MLB’s media rights will be up for negotiation once again.
One big goal is to make it easier for fans. Manfred believes a centralized approach, including the league’s regional sports networks, is best.
“If there’s a centralized approach there, it’s a lot easier to get into a world where a fan has a reduced number of places to look for a particular game,” Manfred said. “For me, the ideal would be having either an MLB network-based or a digitally based kind of fallback where you always know if it’s not a national game, I’m going to be able to find it in one of these two places.”
Wanting that scenario and getting media companies to agree to it are two different things. Manfred said a lot can change in three years. What he did not say is whether fans will have to pay even more to get all those games in a “central” location.
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