After all the hue and cry from Major League Baseball, ESPN is on the doorstep of a deal to acquire extensive local MLB rights — while keeping a healthy slate of exclusive national games.
Andrew Marchand of The Athletic reported Thursday that ESPN and MLB have a “framework agreement” under which ESPN would acquire exclusive digital rights to the out-of-market MLB.tv package, in-market rights to the five MLB teams whose rights currently belong to MLB, a package of “around 30” exclusive national games and potentially more.
The three-year deal would be for a “substantial” fee, per Marchand. Kendall Baker of Yahoo Sports said earlier this week that ESPN would pay “a boatload” for MLB.tv. ESPN currently pays $550 million/year for rights that include “Sunday Night Baseball,” the Home Run Derby, Wild Card playoff games and more.
MLB.tv would be offered as part of the new ESPN direct-to-consumer app, which launched Thursday. While MLB.tv is a streaming service, it has also been bundled with MLB Extra Innings through linear cable providers. Marchand wrote Thursday that it is unclear whether the service will remain available through linear cable under the new deal.
The in-market rights ESPN is set to acquire — to the Guardians, Padres, Twins, Diamondbacks and Rockies — are also expected to be distributed through the new app.
Marchand also said the deal could “eventually” include MLB Network, an unexpected development. It was not clear from Marchand’s report what that would entail. ESPN has reached an agreement to purchase NFL Network in full, but the NFL had been shopping its league-branded channel for years. There have been no prior indications that MLB Network is on the market.
Perhaps the biggest surprise Thursday is that ESPN would hold onto a substantial national game package, but not Sunday Night Baseball. The 30-game package would consist of exclusive game windows on another night of the week, and while that is a step down from Sunday Night Baseball — a fully exclusive window in which no other games are played — it is still considerably better than the non-exclusive TBS Tuesday night package.
