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ESPN opted out of the final three years of their national broadcasting deal with MLB, which wasn’t a surprise, necessarily, especially given the league’s devaluing of their own product in deals with (arguably) Apple and (inarguably) Roku. Over at Sports Business Journal, though, comes sourced word from ESPN that they don’t see this as the end of the relationship between the two after 2025.
Someone might want to let MLB know about that, since the league has been publicly airing its grievances with the worldwide leader and its coverage — or lack thereof — of MLB’s games. You’ll also find plenty of fans who aren’t broken up about ESPN ending things, since they, a little too regularly, act like they’re embarrassed to be covering baseball games. Which doesn’t do much for growing the game, no?
As SBJ put it, the real sticking points are going to be financial. MLB is aggrieved, yes, but that can be solved with the correctly valued media rights package. Of course, ESPN and MLB disagreeing about the worth of the product is a central issue, as well, so that would need to be overcome in order to get said correctly valued rights package.
Which is to say that a reunion might be in the cards, but those at ESPN who think it’s not a given that this is over might need to consider that the end of the relationship is a real possibility. Manfred has publicly stated that MLB needs more games on broadcast television — ESPN is cable — in order to grow the potential audience. So that’s more games on FOX, or partnering with long-lost giants like NBC or CBS or ABC as the arm of Disney that’ll run MLB instead of ESPN.
What’s a bit funny about ESPN thinking they can negotiate their way back to prolonging the relationship with MLB is that they’ve given them an open runway to speak with other potential partners in the leadup to 2026. If they were still under contract, MLB wouldn’t be meeting with NBC or whomever, an act which will likely drive the price up rather than down. MLB has had falling ratings and interest before, and still came out making more money than they had on their previous deal, simply by getting a bidding war going. That very well might be the play here, which could end up costing ESPN not more money, but their rights to broadcast MLB.
Regardless of what goes on with the national deal, it’s possible that ESPN wants to bring local games to their new streaming service Flagship that’s set to arrive in the fall. As SBJ noted, ESPN’s Jimmy Pitaro had expressed interest in such an arrangement before, but if MLB ends up tying the abandoned national rights elsewhere before ESPN and MLB are ready to go for something local, would Pitaro and Co. still be interested?
And why so much concern about the deal from this publication’s perspective, anyway? It all ties into how much money is available (or claimed to be available) for players, which in turn will impact collective bargaining. Consider that it was concern over a drop in television revenue based on fallen ratings that pushed the owners to rally behind then-commissioner Peter Ueberroth’s plan of collusion from 1985 through 1987. Similar concerns owing to a smaller pool of potential viewers and the shrinking of cable and cable rights fees could do similar here. Not the collusion part, necessarily, but a grinding to a halt of the gears that keep free agency and spending going, nonetheless.
While we’re on the subject, commissioner Manfred has continued his backpedaling when it comes to the next wave of collective bargaining, this time while appearing on The Herd with Colin Cowherd. Before, it was to say that he wanted to negotiate at the bargaining table rather than in the media, even though he’s the one who started negotiating through the media by telling Evan Drellich in an interview at The Athletic that a lockout should be treated as just a normal thing going forward, as a part of the process of agreeing to a new collective bargaining agreement.
This time around, Manfred said:
“We do hear a lot about [a salary cap] from fans, particularly in smaller markets,” Manfred said on FS1’s “The Herd” on Wednesday. “But the reality is we’re two years away from the end of the [bargaining] agreement. We’re just not in a position where we are talking about or have made decisions about what’s ahead in the next round of bargaining. I think that a lot of water is going to go over the dam before we need to deal with that issue.”
Maybe Manfred is just practicing for when the owners keep coming up with excuses for why they can’t take negotiating seriously until a lockout is in place, but more seriously, it’s a bit encouraging to see that Manfred and the owners came out making a lot of noise about a lockout and a salary cap and have since realized hey, maybe infuriating players and giving media time to analyze why a salary cap and lockout aren’t necessary isn’t the best approach. Was all of that a couple of months ago just testing the waters, or hubris?
To be a little less glib about it all, another thing that could be going on is that the owners aren’t universally in favor of a cap, and Manfred, beholden to what it is they decide is the correct course of action for 2026 and beyond, is now a little stuck waiting for that to sort itself out. He can’t say anything else because he has nothing else to say, not when the markets are gearing up for internal fighting over revenue-sharing and either a salary cap or just further calcifying the luxury tax threshold in some way.
With negotiations not actually kicking off until next spring, we’ll have more opportunities to try to read these kinds of tea leaves and see which position is the majority one among the owners. If they even have that sorted out by then, anyway.
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