Nine days before the opt-out date between ESPN and Major League Baseball, the two sides have reportedly agreed to cut their broadcast contract short.
The Athletic’s Evan Drellich acquired a memo sent by commissioner Rob Manfred to MLB teams on Thursday announcing the decision. While Drellich reported that Manfred’s letter “did not rule out the sides pairing up again on a new deal,” it also referenced the network’s decreased coverage of the sport as a key factor in the opt-out.
Update: ESPN put out their own statement on this.
ESPN statement on our decision to opt out pic.twitter.com/V8cABUQ8sc
— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) February 20, 2025
And MLB offered a statement as well:
Major League Baseball issued the following statement this evening: pic.twitter.com/C4UFLwiFAw
— MLB Communications (@MLB_PR) February 21, 2025
As a result of this move, the agreement — a seven-year, $550 million annual deal that began in 2021 — between MLB and its longtime partners in Bristol will end early, after the 2025 season.
The situation between ESPN and MLB came to a head quickly. The network believed it was overpaying compared with deals baseball struck with Apple and Roku in recent years, while the league clearly believes it has the leverage to fetch a similar windfall from another partner. In the memo, Manfred called ESPN a “shrinking platform” in reference to the looming launch of its subscription app and decoupling from cable. The commissioner also wrote that MLB expects to present teams with “at least two potential options for consideration over the next few weeks.”
Baseball is making a bet that it can find a better fit without sacrificing much, if any, money on the ESPN deal. The sport may not be near the top of the American sports mountain anymore, but its national viewership was up last year and it offers consistently popular live sports programming for half the year, including the dead sports months of July and August. The baseball postseason is a big draw across all of October, and the 2024 World Series showed how big an audience the sport can still draw when the right teams face off in the Fall Classic.
Any network or streamer that wants extra games in the summer but may not want to go all-in on baseball could see appeal in ESPN’s package. That package includes a big slate on Opening Day, Sunday Night Baseball, the Home Run Derby, and the first round of Wild Card play-in games. Everyone from CBS, which is under new ownership, to Amazon, which is increasingly a day to day sports destination, would appear to be in play.
However, any deal MLB signs will likely only last through 2028, when its deals with Fox and TNT Sports end. That is also the year in which Manfred has expressed hope of building a local game bundle with all 30 teams and selling it to a broadcast partner.
Based upon Manfred’s complaints about ESPN baseball coverage, the league will likely also expect a new partner to dedicate more time to the sport. These days, MLB Network is the only place where viewers can get daily, live baseball analysis.
The opportunity to get in early on those negotiations and be baseball’s third partner will likely entice many platforms. Manfred and the league are making a clear bet that those platforms are ready to pay up.
