The combined annual value of the various deals MLB is negotiating is expected to exceed the expiring ESPN contract that they are replacing.
Major League Baseball expects that the media rights deals it is currently negotiating will generate a higher annual rights fee than the expiring ESPN package that is being replaced, Joe Flint and Isabella Simonetti of The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
ESPN opted out of its seven-year, $550 million/year deal in February and MLB is currently negotiating to split the various parts of the deal — which includes “Sunday Night Baseball,” the Home Run Derby, the Wild Card playoffs and more — across multiple different bidders.
According to the report, Comcast-owned NBCUniversal is in line to pay nearly $200 million/year to acquire rights that would include “Sunday Night Baseball.” (As expected, NBC would carry games on its broadcast network during the weeks between the end of its Sunday night NBA games and the start of its “Sunday Night Football” package, with other games exclusive to Peacock.)
The report did not mention the Wild Card playoff games that NBC is also believed to be pursuing, but noted that talks are ongoing and could include additional pieces that could “drive the price tag significantly higher.”
In addition, Netflix is close to a deal to acquire the annual Home Run Derby for $35 million/year. NBC and Netflix would account for about 43% of the expiring deal’s annual value.
That would leave the Wild Card playoffs, which could be packaged with the Sunday night games or split off separately. Earlier this week, Andrew Marchand of The Athletic reported that NBC and Apple were the lone contenders for the Sunday night and Wild Card games; Kendall Baker of Yahoo Sports said thereafter that NBC was in position to acquire both (and that Apple would also lose its Friday night package in the process, which has not been echoed by any subsequent reporting).
If the existing pieces of the ESPN deal would not add up to $550 million/year, MLB is also negotiating what would be an entirely new deal with ESPN that would include digital rights to the MLB.tv out-of-market package, local in-market rights to five MLB teams, and a new package of exclusive weeknight national games — which would surely take the combined value of the various deals past that mark.
ESPN’s decision to opt out of its existing contract was prompted in large measure by the bargain basement deals MLB struck with Apple ($85M/year) and Roku ($10M/year) for weekly exclusive game inventory. It is likely now that MLB will end up with two-to-three new rights deals that are closer in annual value to those levels than to the expiring ESPN deal, but ultimately come away with a higher combined rights fee.