NBC Sports president Rick Cordella is already thinking past the network’s three-year baseball deal with MLB.
Speaking with The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch this week, Cordella said he hopes NBC will be in the baseball business for much longer than the 2026-28 agreement currently on the books.
“I think whenever we get into a deal with someone, it’s not for just the period of time,” Cordella told Deitsch. “Fox has had baseball since NBC exited back in the early 2000s, and the NBA didn’t come to market for almost 20 years. So whenever you do these deals and become an incumbent, it really puts you in the pole position to sort of look ahead and do many other deals into the future.”
The deal brings Sunday Night Baseball back to NBC for the first time in over two decades, along with the Wild Card round and what used to be Roku’s Sunday morning package. NBC and Peacock are paying close to $200 million annually, which is significantly less than the $550 million ESPN was paying before it opted out of its contract. NBC’s first game airs March 26, 2026, when the Dodgers host the Diamondbacks in an exclusive primetime opener.
Cordella framed the three-year term as a trial run that could lead to something much longer if both sides are happy with how things go. The timing works out for MLB because the deal expires when Fox and TNT Sports’ agreements end in 2028, giving the league a chance to restructure everything at once.
The network plans to bring over elements from Sunday Night Football, including an anthem performer. NBC will also do an on-site pregame show similar to Fox’s — with Kevin Burkhardt, David Ortiz, Alex Rodriguez, and Derek Jeter — though the network hasn’t announced any talent hires yet. Cordella said NBC wants the broadcasts to feel big and will hire recognizable names.
Whether NBC actually extends beyond three years depends entirely on how Sunday Night Baseball performs and what MLB wants when all its national deals expire in 2028. Cordella is positioning the network as a long-term partner, but the numbers will determine if that happens. NBC’s deal covers 25 Sunday night games per season, the entire Wild Card round, 18 Sunday morning games, an exclusive Labor Day primetime game, and Game 2,430 in 2027 and 2028. That’s a lot of inventory to prove the partnership works before both sides decide what comes next.
“At the end of it, my hope and expectation is that we’re in business for baseball for a super long time,” Cordella said.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.