Maybe ESPN And MLB Just Needed A Break?
Just five months ago, it appeared that ESPN and Major League Baseball were getting divorced, effective after the 2025 season.
Now as MLB nears the end of its process to find a new rightsholder for ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball package, the perfect partner may wind up being… ESPN?
During all-star week festivities, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred called out three suitors for the rights: NBC, Apple TV+ and incumbent ESPN. There’s a chance that ESPN’s former package is split between two (and if you’re MLB, that’s the right move to maximize what you get out of this). But the fact that ESPN returned to the negotiating table here shows that the best thing for both parties may have simply been a break.
Even in the short time since it was initially announced that ESPN and MLB’s rights deal would end after this season, you could argue much has changed for both parties.
On the ESPN front, its forthcoming standalone app is about to reshape its entire business, and the main thing it needs to withstand that is essential inventory. We’ve previously discussed in this space how ESPN needs to prove to consumers that they need the service when asking them for $29.99 per month. And if Sunday Night Football, NBA and NHL games, or ACC/SEC sports isn’t doing it for them — perhaps baseball is the winning pitch.
Recent TV successes for MLB would indicate it could be.
In June, the league was happy to report that viewership for ESPN games had increased by 22% year-over-year, along with other positive notes across linear and streaming TV both in the U.S. and abroad. Despite competitive balance concerns around the sport, big-market success hasn’t deterred fans from tuning into national games (or attending them, for that matter).
The national games may not even be the most appealing part of remaining in the baseball business for ESPN, either.
As MLB fights its own regional sports rights issues similar to the ones the NBA is also facing (see Tim Hanlon’s piece from earlier this week), ESPN stands to be a liferaft there with some mutual benefits. ESPN+ already streams select MLB games as it is, and those become significant plays for watch-time in the dead of summer when lucrative live sports programming is more limited.
A new ESPN-MLB agreement that expands upon that setup, even without the Sunday Night rights, is still a win for both parties that checks boxes on exposure, audience demand and valuable inventory for advertisers.
The NHL already has a similar setup with ESPN+ that has every game. ESPN doesn’t need to absorb MLB.TV in the same way it did NHL.TV a few years ago. But since the standalone app will simply flatten out the day’s sports action by default, giving users more recognizable logos while scrolling through is the easiest way to not only get them in at the stated price point, but keep them around.
On CNBC, Alex Sherman posits (following his own conversation with Manfred) that the regional package could wind up being the real prize for similar reasons — it’s a large collection of high-quality inventory that despite being local, automatically gets a boost from appearing within the ESPN app ecosystem and effectively comes off as a complete baseball package. Much like the NHL’s setup does within the app now.
The “Worldwide Leader in Sports” may not the home for absolutely everything anymore given the way the media rights wars have played out with Fox over the last decade. Yet, that might not matter much if this opt-out winds up spurring a deeper and more meaningful relationship with MLB that’s more aligned to ESPN’s future aspirations.
