Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred will have his work cutout for him when it comes to convincing big market owners to go along with his plan to nationalize the league’s local media rights.
According to Evan Drellich of The Athletic, New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner is among those skeptical of Manfred’s grand plan. Last week, Drellich reported that Manfred is eyeing 2028 to go forward with a plan that would nationalize a large portion of MLB’s local media rights inventory. The goal would be to sell a bundle of local rights to a streamer like Amazon or Apple, allowing fans to subscribe and watch their team’s games.
This plan makes sense to the majority of small and middle market teams who could likely command a larger rights fee by banding together and selling to a streamer. However, it makes little sense for teams like the Yankees who have lucrative local rights contracts already.
“We’ve had discussions with Rob in the past,” Steinbrenner told The Athletic. “He knows my take, which is that at the very least, it needs to be an optional thing, but I’m gonna leave it at that.”
YES Network currently has a contract with the Yankees that goes through 2042. Likewise, the local rights for the large market Los Angeles Dodgers are locked up through 2039.
When prompted by The Athletic about what could possibly compel the Yankees to capitulate and cede some local inventory to a nationalized package, Steinbrenner said, “We just haven’t gotten into it enough. That’s all I can give you (for) an intelligent answer to that. We just haven’t gotten into it. We only own 25 percent of YES, we have a lot of other owners. That’s a discussion to have at some point with them, or not have with them. But we’re not there yet.”
The absence of at least some level of inventory from large market teams would greatly devalue any bundle that Manfred can put together. The Yankees, for their part, already have a deal with Amazon that saw Prime Video exclusively stream 21 games last season. Amazon is also a part-owner in YES Network, which certainly provides an in. But one can imagine that the Yankees would have to part with more than 21 games under Manfred’s plan.
That would likely involve some sweeteners from the league to the Yankees (and teams in similar positions of leverage).
It’s still early days for MLB, who prior to 2028 will have to renegotiate a new collective bargaining agreement with the MLBPA following the 2026 season. But negotiations between the league and its large market teams will be something important to monitor in the upcoming years.
