Fresh off a record-smashing World Series, Major League baseball has finally inked long-awaited new media rights deals with NBC, Netflix, and ESPN.
The new rights packages came about after MLB and ESPN broke up earlier this year after 35 years of national games on the cable sports giant. The new deal will keep ESPN in the baseball business, but its flagship Sunday night games will move to NBC Sports, which will now have year-round live games that night: Sunday Night Football during the NFL season, NBA games once the NFL season is over and baseball in the late spring and summer. NBC is also getting ESPN’s Wild Card rights.
The deal with Netflix, initially thought to be just for the annual Home Run Derby during the All-Star break, is somewhat more extensive than that. The streamer will also have MLB’s opening night game and a revived Field of Dreams game in Dyersville, Iowa (where the 1989 Kevin Costner movie was filmed). MLB last staged a Field of Dreams game in 2022. MLB Network’s production team will produce the three events.
MLB’s agreements with NBC Sports and Netflix run for three years, bringing them into alignment with existing rights holders Fox Sports and TNT Sports. Fox and TNT’s current rights, including for most of the postseason, are unaffected, and the entire package will be up for bid again in 2028.
The new ESPN deal will bring live, out-of-market games to ESPN’s streaming platform via the acquisition of streaming service MLB.TV. That deal will give ESPN a big point of entry into regional broadcasts of games. MLB.TV currently charges $70 per year for users to access all games outside of their local markets.
More to come.