this article in the Wall Street Journal<\/a>, ESPN will be paying about $550 million per year \u2014 which is basically equal to the deal they opted out of in February.)<\/p>\nHere\u2019s the key to the deal, per Marchand:<\/p>\n
Under the framework of an agreement between MLB and ESPN, ESPN would have MLB.TV as part of its direct-to-consumer offering. It is not fully clear yet if out-of-market subscribers who pay for the package through cable or other linear subscription would still be able to receive MLB.TV that way.<\/p>\n
For digital consumers, fans are likely to need an ESPN direct-to-consumer subscription to go along with MLB.TV. The overall new pricing for MLB.TV is not yet decided, but is expected to be similar or slightly cheaper than the current $29.99 per month rate.<\/p>\n
Ah, ha. So in addition to paying for MLB.TV \u2014 which cost about $150 for this season \u2014 you\u2019d have to pony up for ESPN\u2019s DTC app. As Marchand says, the overall pricing isn\u2019t clear yet but I don\u2019t see any way it will be cheaper, or even equal, to what it is now. True, you do get a large number of other sports events with ESPN\u2019s new app, but what if you don\u2019t care about those and only want baseball? And what if you live outside the Cubs market territory and need MLB.TV to watch the Cubs? Would you pay extra for the ESPN app?<\/p>\n
Also, over the last few years there have been a number of free deals for MLB.TV. T-Mobile subscribers have received free MLB.TV with their service, a real nice perk. Season-ticket holders for many teams, including the Cubs, also get MLB.TV as part of their packages. It\u2019s unclear whether such things will continue, or whether MLB Extra Innings, the MLB.TV equivalent for cable\/satellite subscribers, will continue to be available.<\/p>\n
If the deal is signed, ESPN will have the full rights to in- and out-of-market games for five teams. The Cleveland Guardians, San Diego Padres, Minnesota Twins, Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies are the clubs under MLB control. Fans would likely need to subscribe to ESPN either directly or through an operator, and then, for an added price, they would be able to receive their local teams\u2019 games.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Rob Manfred has made no secret of his desire to have local and national rights packaged together. He thinks \u2014 and he could be right \u2014 that having all those rights together up for bid might bring more money to MLB\u2019s coffers. But just try to get teams like the Yankees, Dodgers, Mets and yes, the Cubs to give up their local rights and RSNs they have an ownership interest in. For now, those five teams will be the only ones whose local rights are part of this new ESPN deal.<\/p>\n
Now, what about Sunday Night Baseball, which has been on ESPN since 1990? Per Marchand:<\/p>\n
Netflix remains the heavy favorite to pick up the Home Run Derby for the next three years, while NBC and Apple are considered the top landing spots for \u201cSunday Night Baseball\u201d and the first round playoff games..<\/p>\n
I could see SNB moving to streaming on Peacock, if not Apple. As noted above, ESPN would still have a weekly exclusive game, just not on Sunday night. As far as having the Home Run Derby on Netflix, well, perhaps many of you already subscribe to Netflix. I do not, and I\u2019m not going to subscribe just so I can watch a three-hour event once a year.<\/p>\n
As Marchand notes, all of these deals, whenever finalized, are expected to run for three years so that their expiration would coincide with the expiration of MLB\u2019s TV deals with Fox and TBS. The league thinks that having all these rights up for bid at once would bring in more money. They could be right.<\/p>\n
What this is going to do, clearly, is cost you more. You\u2019ll have to have at least one additional subscription, to ESPN, and possibly two others (NBC\/Peacock and Netflix) to watch games that have previously been on cable\/satellite or broadcast channels. It\u2019s definitely not fan- or consumer-friendly, but this is the way MLB has been trending in recent years \u2014 just take as much money as possible.<\/p>\n
As always, we await developments.<\/p>\n
17 Comments<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ESPN has broadcast MLB games for the last 35 years, known for its feature Sunday Night Baseball exclusive,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2399],"tags":[5,138,24,40817,4245,161,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-273716","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-cubs","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-cubs","11":"tag-chicago-cubs-mlb-broadcasts-telecasts","12":"tag-chicagocubs","13":"tag-cubs","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115095570010333414","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}