Major League Baseball could reportedly “walk away” from ESPN in the event the network opts out of its current rights deal after next season.
Andrew Marchand and Evan Drellich of The Athletic reported Thursday that MLB would be “unlikely” to reach a new deal with ESPN should it opt out of its contract, a move that the network has long been expected to make. The thought has been that ESPN would opt out and reach a new deal with MLB that would potentially include a lower rights fee or some local rights.
Both ESPN and MLB are able to opt out of the deal next month, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said Thursday, though there is no expectation that MLB would be the one to pull the trigger. Manfred said the sides are in talks.
ESPN currently owns rights to Sunday Night Baseball, a handful of other exclusive regular season windows (including Opening Day), the Home Run Derby and the entire Wild Card round of playoffs. Its rights fee of $550 million/year is actually a reduction from its previous contract ($700m/year), which included considerably more regular season coverage.
John Ourand of Puck reported last year that ESPN was irked about the minuscule rights fees streamers have paid for their MLB packages. ESPN’s inventory is not dramatically different than that of Apple, which pays just $85 million/year for exclusive Friday night doubleheaders. (Apple of course does not have marquee events like Opening Day, the Derby or the Wild Card round, but even those ESPN properties would surely not make up a $465 million/year gap.)
Roku last season struck a deal for exclusive Sunday afternoon games worth a mere pittance by sports rights standards, $10 million/year.
ESPN pays the second-highest rights fee of any MLB broadcaster, second only to World Series rightsholder Fox Corporation ($729m/year). Its fee exceeds that of Warner Bros. Discovery, which pays $535 million/year for rights that include two full Division Series and an LCS, albeit alongside regular season inventory that is non-exclusive and occasionally subject to local blackout.
ESPN and MLB have clashed before. In 1999, MLB said it would terminate ESPN’s rights deal three years early after the network moved Sunday Night Baseball to ESPN2 in favor of NFL Sunday Night Football the prior September. The sides battled in court for months, with the ultimate outcome being a new six-year deal.
