ESPN’s coverage of major league baseball games will end at the end of the 2025 season, at least in its current format.
ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro informed baseball committee member Rob Manfred on Thursday morning that the network had opted out of the last three years of the contract.
Both ESPN and MLB issued a statement Thursday night confirming the current rights transaction termination.
There was a March 1 deadline for MLB and ESPN to opt out of the last three years of their contract. The side has agreed to a seven-year contract in 2021, which averaged $550 million per season.
“We had a long and mutually beneficial partnership with ESPN, which dates back to the first MLB game in 1990,” MLB said in a statement. “Unfortunately, in recent years, ESPN has reduced baseball’s scope and investment in ways that do not match its appeal and performance on the sports platform. MLB has a strong audience, valuable demographics, and home runs. Given that it offers exclusive rights to cover unique events like the Derby, ESPN’s requests to reduce rights fees are simply unacceptable.”
The ESPN-Major League Baseball Split was first reported by The Athletic.
Manfred wrote a note to the owners obtained from the Associated Press that MLB and ESPN have “mutually agreed to terminate our contract.”
Although ESPN has posted MLB games since 1990, the network has reduced the coverage of its current contracts to 30 regular season games and a wildcard postseason series, primarily on Sunday nights. ESPN also had a Home Run Derby and 10 Spring Training Games.
The last eight-year contracts held between 2014 and 2021 featured ESPN broadcasting up to 90 regular season games. It also stopped airing news shows from 2017’s Daily “Baseball Tonight” highlights and news shows.
“We are grateful for our long-standing relationship with Major League Baseball and are proud of our coverage super-selves fans at ESPN. In making this decision, we have the same discipline that has built ESPN’s industry-leading live event portfolio. and applied financial responsibility. “We have been through the process and are continuing to be open to exploring new ways to serve MLB fans across the platform beyond 2025.”
ESPN has rights to all four major US professional sports leagues since returning to the National Hockey League in 2021. A new 11-year agreement with the NBA begins next season, with averages $2.7 and averages $1.4 billion. $1 billion per season in NFL trading. This will continue until 2032.
Major League Baseball will receive an average of $729 million from Fox and $470 million annually from Turner Sports under deals that have expired since the 2028 season.
ESPN is still open to slashing contracts and pursuing transactions after seeing their deals with Apple and Roku attacked. Apple will pay $85 million per season for the Friday night package that has been airing since 2022, but the Roku deal for Sunday afternoon games is worth $10 million a year.
“As of December 2024, ESPN has had over 100 million homes in 2011 and 53.6 million homes from the peak of the 69m home that hit its current contract in 2021,” Manfred said in his memo. It’s available.” A larger distribution pool compared to Apple and Roku.
“ESPN says it wants to continue using MLB for its platform, particularly in light of future launches of its DTC (consumer) products, but it does not think it would be beneficial for us to accept less trades. . We’ll stay on a reduced platform,” Manfred writes. “It is not wise to devalue your rights with existing partners to make the most of MLB to optimize your rights to participate in the next trading cycle, and Markey’s regular season games, Home Run Derby, Wildcards I believe it is wise to make the playoffs. Round new broadcast and/or streaming platforms.”
“Positive energy on sports has also brought great interest from both traditional media companies and streaming services that want to acquire the rights to MLB games,” MLB said in a statement.
Manfred has said over the past two seasons that MLB hopes to take a more national approach to its rights, rather than the majority of its games reside in the local sports network.
“We are blessed with a huge amount of content: 2,430 games. I think there are some local components due to the amount of content, but the strategy needs to be more national, and we have to be able to do so. I think reach needs to be more national.” event.
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Associated Press baseball writer Ronald Blum contributed to this report.
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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
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