Sometime between now and when the sun enters its Earth-devouring red giant phase, Major League Baseball will make an official announcement regarding its 2026-28 media rights contracts. Commissioner Rob Manfred has confirmed the league has reached agreements in principle with a trio of outlets for what amounts to a three-year stopgap deal, and while the parties continue to work out some nettlesome particulars, the framework of the bridge is fully in view.

Under the terms of the new package, MLB will return to the NBC airwaves for the first time (at least in any meaningful way) since the network signed off at the end of Game 6 of the 2000 American League Championship Series. While NBC recently hosted special one-off MLB broadcasts—a May 7, 2023 Orioles-Braves game averaged 1.6 million viewers, and the previous spring gave rise to a Red Sox-White Sox matchup that drew 1.3 million—those were essentially promotional airings designed to steer fans to MLB’s new Peacock slate.

In exchange for some $200 million per season, NBC and Peacock will assume dominion over the Sunday Night Baseball package from which ESPN uncoupled itself in February. NBC also picks up the rights to the four Wild Card series, a move that sees the network bolster its fall schedule with anywhere from eight to 12 postseason games. And while those early playoff brackets aren’t necessarily a massive ratings driver—Game 3 of last year’s Mets-Brewers series delivered a format-high 4.02 million viewers on ESPN, with the full Wild Card round averaging 2.82 million—NBC’s considerable reach advantage over cable could give the games a noticeable lift.

Peacock is also said to be preparing to assume the weekly Sunday morning MLB game from Roku, which began hosting that carve-out at the top of this season. The MLB Sunday Leadoff package launched on Peacock in 2022 and continued for another year before NBC Sports decided against renewing the deal. (As noted above, two of those games were simulcast on NBC proper.) Roku then picked up the rights for a spartan $10 million—about a third of what Peacock shelled out in each year of its contract.

The Roku deal originally was meant to extend through the end of the 2026 MLB season.

Also back in the saddle is ESPN, whose decision to jettison Sunday Night Baseball was the catalyst for MLB’s season-long rights intrigue. For ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro, the money just didn’t add up, as Bristol was forking over some $550 million per year in exchange for a package that was delivering just $58.5 million in ad sales revenue. Manfred reacted to the jilting by taking shots at ESPN’s distribution model, but cooler heads would (eventually) prevail.

While ESPN will still pay $550 million a year for a menu of MLB games, the structure of this new deal is unlike any other. Not only will the bulk of that annual payout go toward licensing the league’s out-of-market streaming offering, MLB.tv, but ESPN will also pick up the local rights to a quintet of teams that have been displaced from the legacy RSN model. These include the Padres, Diamondbacks, Rockies, Twins and Guardians, although the Mariners would appear to be likely candidates to join the movement should the club’s owners decide to shutter Root Sports Northwest.

Aside from all the local flavor, ESPN is also locked in on a midweek slate of national games that will carry over through the end of the 2028 campaign.

Also joining in on the fun is Netflix, which continues its pursuit of event-scale live sports holdings with the acquisition of the Home Run Derby. The streaming giant, which stopped reporting its subscriber counts at the start of this year, closed out 2024 with 301.6 million global customers. In exchange for the Derby, Netflix will pay MLB approximately $35 million per year.

In its first stab at hosting an NFL Christmas Day doubleheader, Netflix last year averaged 24.2 million U.S. viewers with its Chiefs-Steelers/Ravens-Texans two-fer, the latter of which included a halftime performance by Beyoncé.

Lastly, despite a spasm of tweeted reports that signaled a premature end to Apple’s seven-year, $595 million Friday Night Baseball deal, the tech titan does not intend to walk away from MLB before its contract runs out three years from now.

In settling the stopgap deals after a full season of negotiations, MLB can now refocus its attention on the rapidly approaching 2028 campaign, when all of its national contracts expire. While lead TV partner Fox Sports, which airs the World Series every year on its broadcast flagship, is determined to continue its longstanding partnership with baseball, the ontological status of another linear player is somewhat more uncertain. A floated Paramount Skydance takeover of TNT Sports’ parent company Warner Bros. Discovery scuttles any long-term projections about MLB’s cable future, but TBS will continue televising national games through the end of its current deal.

Manfred has said he hopes to increase the number of national MLB games under the next round of rights deals, while developing a centralized model for all local rights. How the commish plans to convince big-market, franchise-owned RSNs such as YES Network, NESN, Spectrum SportsNet LA and Marquee Sports to surrender their in-market rights is anybody’s guess, but Manfred last week said he believes MLB will have each of its 30 clubs on the same page when the time comes to bring local in-house.