Rob Manfred wants a resolution, and he wants it stat.<\/p>\n
Major League Baseball\u2019s commissioner might be having buyer\u2019s remorse<\/a> about the league\u2019s ESPN opt-out, but perhaps he didn\u2019t watch Wednesday\u2019s First Take segment that showed why the two sides might be disillusioned<\/a> with each other. Either way, Manfred wants a resolution. And he wants it before the All-Star Game.<\/p>\n As of last week, Apple TV was reportedly a \u201cleading candidate\u201d to pick up some of the rights<\/a> being relinquished by the Worldwide Leader. ESPN mutually opted out of its current deal with MLB, which included properties such as Sunday Night Baseball, select early-round playoff games, and the Home Run Derby, among others.<\/p>\n While Apple TV is a leading candidate, we can\u2019t discount NBCUniversal, either. The media conglomerate, according to The Wall Street Journal<\/a>, made an offer<\/a> to acquire at least part of the package of regular-season and postseason games that ESPN is walking away from, at a discounted rate compared to what ESPN was paying.<\/p>\n Now, there could conceivably be a world where Apple TV and NBC both come away with rights, but Manfred just wants it to be over with.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m hopeful that in the next few weeks, prior to the All-Star Game, we get something done,\u201d Manfred said, per Front Office Sports. \u201cBut when you\u2019re having three different sets of conversations, it\u2019s a lot. Each set of conversations involves a different group of content. We\u2019re talking to three people about different packages.\u201d<\/p>\n These agreements, which he hopes will come by mid-July, are just stopgaps to keep things running until 2028, when MLB\u2019s other national rights deals with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery expire. After that, Manfred wants to overhaul the entire rights structure, combining national and local packages into a single, streamlined strategy. And it sure sounds like, because these are short-term deals, he\u2019s willing to sacrifice top-dollar offers in favor of reaching the largest possible audience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rob Manfred wants a resolution, and he wants it stat. Major League Baseball\u2019s commissioner might be having buyer\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,4,11850,330],"class_list":{"0":"post-82857","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-mlb-media-rights","11":"tag-rob-manfred"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114634669665933371","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82857","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=82857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}