What will become of the new MLB TV media rights deal?

Yahoo Sports senior MLB analyst Jake Mintz and senior MLB analyst Jordan Shusterman break down how they think MLB’s new TV media rights deal will take shape in the upcoming weeks. Hear the full conversation on the “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.

Video Transcript

Baseball television rights.

What a fun topic to discuss on a podcast.

Uh, we’ve had a good amount of reporting on this over the last few weeks.

The latest update involves ESPN seemingly coming back to the table.

You know, ESPN had this deal.

With MLB for their respective collection of, television rights, which included Sunday Night Baseball, the Home Run Derby, and the wildcard.

That was going to go through 2028.

Both sides said, yeah, maybe we should rework this.

So they decided to opt out after the season, but now they are already back negotiating.

Now involving the rights to a selection of teams that MLB had already taken over with the local television rights fiasco that has, of course, defined sports and I would just say how people watch sports over the last 5 years.

And so it does appear that ESPN is getting involved in acquiring the in-market rights for 5 teams: the D-backs, Guardians, Padres, Rockies, and Twins, and maybe they are not going to have Sunday Night Baseball anymore.

That seems like there’s other people; we know Netflix is involved trying to get the Home Run Derby.

Is NBC gonna get Sunday Night Baseball?

This is quite the game of broadcast rights musical chairs.

I think the thing I’m most curious about, and I think a lot of people listening to this are most curious about, is some of the reporting involved with ESPN trying to get the rights to MLB.TV or parts of MLB.TV and what that would mean for how a product that has essentially functioned the same way for 20 years, blackouts aside.

How would that change?

Yeah, if MLB.TV suddenly doesn’t have a certain number of teams, that feels like a bad thing, but I don’t know if that’s exactly how this is going to work.

The reality is, ESPN as a television product has the biggest reach in our country, and their unwillingness over recent years to highlight baseball.

It is a bad thing for our sport.

I think that our sport has thought past that.

And here’s an example: ESPN, to promote their new DTC direct-to-consumer streaming service, tweeted a collage of a bunch of different athletes.

I think it’s like 100 athletes on here.

Uh, 3 baseball players, right?

Like, does that focus, Does that spotlight change at all with this deal?

I have no idea, but that’s what I’m very interested in seeing.

What will become of the new MLB TV media rights deal?

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