Major League Baseball has been searching for a potential new network to host its Sunday morning games after the league’s media rights deal with Peacock ended following the 2023 season. And on Thursday, reports have emerged that suggest that they may have finally found their new partner.
Peacock was the home of the package of games for the last two years, highlighting one MLB game a week on Sunday mornings for most of the 2022 and the 2023 seasons.
According to The Athletic, MLB was “closing in” on a new deal with a network back in April. But we didn’t know any specifics in terms of what network could potentially be taking the slate of games.
Now, we know who could potentially be the biggest suitor in a potential deal with MLB. According to Joe Flint of The Wall Street Journal, Roku has emerged as a suitor for the Sunday morning streaming package.
Some baseball media news: Roku has emerged as a suitor for the Sunday morning streaming package of games known as "Sunday Leadoff." NBCU's Peacock had the package for last two seasons but their deal expired and as yet there is no new home for the small package of games.
— Joe Flint (@JBFlint) April 23, 2024
Roku notably has a litany of streaming apps such as the MLB app, Fox Sports, Warner Bros., and the Discovery channels of TNT, TBS, and truTV available for its users. But the service has also been ramping up its own programming to add to its sports hub.
If Roku does indeed land this deal for the rights to MLB Sunday morning package of games, it would be its first major live sports rights deal outside of their affiliated streaming services mentioned above.
It will certainly be interesting to see whether this potential deal closes soon, particularly because MLB is certainly behind the eight-ball in terms of their Sunday morning schedule compared to the 2023 season.
Peacock began airing Sunday morning games on their package on April 23rd last season. And at this point, we are obviously past that point in the season. So MLB may show some urgency in getting this deal done and begin airing Sunday morning games on Roku as soon as possible.
About Reice Shipley
Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.