Once again, ESPN and Major League Baseball are fighting.
Eight years removed from an ugly disagreement over having Sunday Night Baseball games pre-empted by the NFL — a disagreement which resulted in the temporary cancellation of the television contract between MLB and ESPN — and only months removed from a spat over the premature publication of the All Star rosters, which resulted in Baseball Tonight being banned from the site of the All Star Game, the uneasy partners are back at it, this time over advertisements.
John Ourand of the Sports Business Journal reports Major League Baseball is looking to restrict ESPN’s access to the 2007 MLB Postseason, including “banning ESPN?s ?SportsCenter? and ?Baseball Tonight? studio sets from postseason venues“, as a result of the sports giant refusing to run advertising for playoff games on FOX and TBS.
This is the first year since 2001 that ESPN will not be involved in any postseason coverage whatsoever. In 2002, ESPN aired coverage on ABC Family Channel. ESPN policy prohibits advertising events airing on networks outside of the Disney family.
Ads for non-sports programming or networks may be acceptable with all requests handled on a case-by-case basis.
No television network or programming oriented web site references permitted.
There are some exceptions. The current six-year deal Disney and Turner have with the NBA “has a clause that says [ESPN] has to cross-promote games on TNT“, as did the previous television contract Disney and News Corp. had with MLB. However, the current seven-year deal between Major League Baseball, News Corp., Disney and Turner does not have any such clause.
As a result, ESPN will not run any network-specific advertising for the playoffs this year, a situation that greatly frustrates officials within Major League Baseball. “MLB is annoyed that one of its biggest broadcast partners is not helping promote postseason baseball … baseball executives are increasingly frustrated, believing that they have to fight too much with smaller leagues, like Major League Soccer and the Arena Football League, for attention from ESPN executives.”
With that in mind, the problem may be MLB, not ESPN. Major League Baseball is not the NFL. MLB does not have the same kind of pull, and as such cannot exact nearly as much control over its television partners. And no matter how much Major League Baseball officials would like to force ESPN to promote the game and play by their rules, the fact remains that the cable giant is far more powerful than America’s pastime.
And MLB is not alone in that regard. Other sports entities have had their problems with ESPN/ABC; the NBA and ABC had a quiet spat in 2004 over the lack of promotion of NBA games. Quoting one NBA executive: “There was the expectation that ABC would be an as good or better partner than NBC was, but you don’t see the commitment as a partner.” More than likely, those concerns still exist not only in regards to the NBA and ESPN, but with ESPN and many of its other league partners. If the NHL’s most recent relationship with ESPN is any indication, there are many leagues that have felt mistreated by the Worldwide Leader. That is simply the price leagues have to pay, in exchange for the immense platform brought by having games air on ESPN.
Certainly, if MLB is worried about the promotion of its postseason, restricting the preeminent American sports network from appearing at playoff venues is more of a shot to the foot than an assertion of power.
