When MLB commissioner Rob Manfred referred to the league’s media rights negotiations as a “jigsaw puzzle,” he was not exaggerating.
In addition to acquiring “Sunday Night Baseball,” Comcast’s NBCUniversal is “expected” to reacquire the Sunday morning package of games that it relinquished to Roku in 2024, according to Rob Tornoe of the Philadelphia Inquirer. NBCU owned rights to the Sunday morning package upon its launch in 2022, but gave up the rights after two seasons when it was unwilling to renew for a mere $30 million/year.
According to Tornoe, Roku’s $10 million/year rights deal for the Sunday morning package expires after next season — not in 2028, like the rest of the MLB rights contracts — and NBC would either take over the final year of Roku’s contract or begin carrying the games in 2027. If the latter, NBC would only be guaranteed two years of the package, assuming that it would end in 2028 to line up with the rest of MLB’s rights.
It is not clear whether the Roku package would be included in the $200 million/year NBC is reportedly going to pay for “Sunday Night Baseball.”
NBCU was previously reported to be acquiring Apple TV’s Friday night package of games, but that would seem to have been erroneous. The Sunday package would give NBCU a makeshift doubleheader on most Sundays during the season and presumably the flexibility to carry afternoon games on its broadcast network in weeks when NBC’s Sunday night NFL and NBA packages take precedence.
Unlike Roku, NBC produced the Sunday morning games when it held the rights from 2022-23, using in-house talent. The NBC broadcast network carried the opening game of the deal in May 2022, averaging 1.3 million viewers. NBC also aired a game the following season.
Between two exclusive Sunday windows and the Wild Card playoffs, NBCU is on the verge of its most significant relationship with MLB since the ill-fated “Baseball Network” of the mid-1990s, and arguably since the network held rights for more than 40 uninterrupted years from 1947-89.
