https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2025/09/mlb-media-rights-agreement-in-principle-rob-manfred/
'Manfred said he expects that rights to all 30 clubs will be available to include in a potential centralized option in 2028.'
“For me, the ideal would be, for example, having either an MLB Network-based or a digitally-based kind of fall back where you always know if it’s not a national game, I’m going to be able to find it one of these two places.”
It's hard to overstate how big this is. This is a many year culmination of the decline of RSNs and their regional TV contracts. This could be said to all have started with the sale of the Dodgers where they sold the team and the new owners immediately signed an enormous RSN deal. A deal with fees so high that no non-Warner cable operator picked up Dodgers TV rights for over a season. Warner cable systems had them because Warner had the rights.
Higher and higher RSN fees are part of what led to the breakdown of cable bundles (due to driving up cable bills) and drove up players' salaries.
This change would be enormous, in its impact in how we can consume baseball and how baseball players are paid. Obviously this has strike/lockout implications.
But if this can be worked out it could reverse MLB's fortunes by making it easier to be a baseball fan and easier to reach young people who under the RSN system are unlikely to have casual access to games unless they are already fans.
Obviously this could provide relief from the crazy overlapping exclusive rights areas teams have in the US (see Las Vegas, Hawaii, etc.).
[edit: to add one small bit to this he speaks of basically creating another option for viewers to purchase a single subscription to watch all regional (not-national) games. It does not mean taking the rights away from the teams.]
28 comments
Maybe he’s never heard of Rogers who actually owns the Toronto Blue Jays. Maybe the 29 other teams Rob
The Red Sox own NESN, not happening.
As long as there are no blackouts
Good luck getting the major markets teams with their owned RSNs on board.
Oh and same with Rogers and the Blue Jays.
But if that means FanDuel Sports doesn’t air games at the end of the decade, so be it,
All I want is to be able to watch all 162 games from my favorite team in one place, plus the playoffs. I don’t care if they are local to me or not. I should be able to buy a single subscription to watch all the games in one place.
I don’t know if we just end up being a weird exception in this story, but it’s literally like he forgets Canada exists and has a team in it.
To all the know it alls who say this can’t be true because <team> owns <RSN> I would just suggest Manfred knows this. And that it’s addressed in the article.
Fine. But why would the teams that are making money hand over fist do this? Particularly the Red Sox. Unless mlb monopolizes it just to twist a higher price point out of the viewers
I miss local tv broadcasts
“And then we’ll have a monopoly and raise the prices even higher and higher” (cue Dr. Evil laugh)
I feel like centralizing all of the broadcasts into one streaming service would allow the MLB/Teams to use targeted ads which would make them way more money.
Watching anything on MLB TV now the commercials are your generic national ads, random companies that you are nowhere close to, and dead air.
Centralizing the broadcasts would make it so much easier for them to charge more for more effective ads and make bank for all of the teams.
MLS Season pass model > every other leagues current model. Every regular season, playoff, and leagues cup game. No blackouts, watch every team straight from the Apple TV app and it’s a flat rate per season ($100).
Is this a pipe dream for MLB? Yes, but this is what I want.
Is Contract Law not a thing anymore? Because if teams have a contract with an RSN, unless the RSN goes out of business, Manfred cannot break that contract. The Phillies are on NBC Sports Philadelphia and own a 25% stake in it and have a contract that runs through the 2041 season to broadcast Phillies games. How is that being broken?
MANFRED IN 2028: Coming your way this season, you’ll be able to watch every game from every team – no blackouts – for ONLY $899 per season! Sign up now!
As a Dodger fan who can’t legally watch Dodgers games….. yar har who cares I be sailin the high seas!
They really need to do this.
MLB is impossible to watch half the time and local blackouts are clearly not convincing people to go to the stadium.
On the other hand, MLS’s AppleTV partnership has been great for viewers. you can watch every single game all season long for a pretty reasonable price, no blackouts if the game isn’t sellout or any nonsense like that.
Happy to pay more. But let me watch 162 Padre games. Oh, and if I happen to be in far west Texas when the Padres play the Astros… don’t black me out. I\
How much is that going to cost me?
Isn’t this just mlb.tv but you get your blackout team(s)?
It did not drive up player salaries.
Buying the MLB app at that full price of $150 for the season should include all 162 games of all teams no matter the zip code of the purchaser, plus all playoff games and World Series
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Would we even be watching live sports the way we are now by 2028?
Manfred is full of shit
Highly unlikely tbh, why would any big market that has a big deal take a paycut lets get real its bad bussines from that point of view
Ahoyyyyy
I think it’s ridiculous that you have to have three different streaming subscriptions in order to watch the playoffs.
He really thinks he’s going to be successful in convincing the Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, Red Sox, Phillies, Blue Jays, and Cubs to go along with his plan.
That’s adorable.