Major League Baseball and Turner Sports announced Thursday morning a seven-year media rights extension that will run through the 2028 season. John Ourand and Eric Prisbell of Sports Business Journal report that the agreement will see Turner Sports pay roughly $535MM annually in the new agreement — a 65 percent increase over their previous deal’s $325MM annual sum. That would bring the total value of the extension to $3.7 billion for Major League Baseball.
It’s the latest wildly lucrative media rights deal for MLB. Less than two years ago, MLB and FOX Sports announced a media rights extension covering the same 2022-28 span that was worth a reported $5.1 billion and a three-year, $300MM streaming deal with DAZN. FOX retained the rights to the World Series under the parameters of that deal.
MLB’s newest windfall comes at a time that owners throughout the league have been hit by revenue losses which spawned outlandish comments on baseball’s lack of profits. Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. said earlier this summer that the baseball industry “isn’t very profitable, to be quite honest.” It was a borderline farcical comment that prompted many to point out that DeWitt purchased the Cardinals, currently valued at an estimated $2.2 billion, for a reported $150MM a quarter century ago. However, other owners have voiced similarly brazen claims.
Cubs owner Tom Ricketts, for instance, lamented “biblical” 2020 losses while telling ESPN’s Jesse Rogers: “[Owners] raise all the revenue they can from tickets and media rights, and they take out their expenses, and they give all the money left to their GM to spend. The league itself does not make a lot of cash.”
Comments along those lines, juxtaposed with multi-billion dollar agreements such as today’s Turner deal and 2018’s FOX extension, only serve to stoke the flames in the ever-growing tension between the MLBPA and MLB’s owners. That tension proved overwhelmingly detrimental earlier this year as the two sides spent months in a quarrel over the economic components of return-to-play proposals — a contentious back-and-forth that did not reflect well on either party.
The distrust between the two sides figures to continue in a unique offseason that many expect to be frustrating for free agents as teams look to recoup lost revenue. And, all of this comes with just over one year remaining on the current collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the MLBPA, which expires in December 2021.
Turning to the details of today’s agreement, TBS will continue airing one Wild Card game, two Division Series rounds and one League Championship Series each year. The agreement also introduces a new, season-long Tuesday Night Baseball package beginning in 2022 that will be hosted by Ernie Johnson and feature analysis from Pedro Martinez, Jimmy Rollins and Curtis Granderson. There’s also a digital component of the agreement, as one would expect, allowing Turner to grant streaming access via various platforms.
“We’re delighted to extend our long-standing relationship with Major League Baseball and all of the opportunities this agreement offers us as we broaden our coverage of the game across all of our platforms,” said WarnerMedia chairman of news and sports Jeff Zucker.
“This agreement positions both organizations for mutual growth by continuing Postseason coverage on TBS, delivering a new Tuesday night Baseball franchise, and expanding baseball’s presence on Turner Sports’ digital platforms,” Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred added in his own statement.
It’s notable, too, that today’s agreement — like the 2018 FOX deal — is centered around the preexisting 10-team playoff format featuring sudden-death Wild Card games. Commissioner Manfred, meanwhile, has already voiced his hope that this year’s expanded playoff format will stick in the long term. Doing so would seem to create additional opportunity for MLB to sell rights to some of the newly created postseason rounds — be it to Turner Sports, FOX or another major outlet.
Various reports have pegged this year’s expanded postseason format as generating between $200-300MM in additional television revenue for the league. The players need to sign off on permanent postseason expansion, however, which is sure to be a key talking point in the aforementioned wave of collective bargaining talks that looms on the horizon.
Get ready for expanded playoffs. Get ready for these new rules to become permanent.
Already figured they would become permanent.
The new rules better not be permanent except for maybe the three-batter minimum and the DH.
And if they are?
7 inning double headers won’t be permanent, I promise you that. Because when fans are in the stands all double headers will be split, and if someone bought a ticket for a 9 inning game and then ended up with a 7 inning make-up it’d raise a lot of unnecessary customer ire.
I hope not. I’m A oldschool Nl guy but I will admit, I would not mind the Dh staying as it has convinced me. However the 7 inn double headers, runner on 2nd tied game and especially the new playoffs need to go.
This is why it doesn’t matter just how much Manfred tinkers with baseball and alienates fans. The almighty dollar is the end goal, and it appears he’s doing a good job with that. The owners won’t care as long as they’re getting money like this.
@JDGoat – you’re absolutely right.
JD Goat. I really don’t mind some of these rules. The only one I 100% hate is the expanded playoff rule. Why do we have a 162 game season?
Change the extra inning rule to the 12th inning and not the 10th. I don’t mind the three batter rule. There are not so many double headers that changing it to 7 innings give me a problem. But if you are going to have day night double hitters, they should be nine innings.
I like the three batter rule and the universal DH, they were good additions out of all the rule changes. Agree with all your other points. I thought the extra inning rule would be atrocious and it hasn’t been that bad. But you’re right, they should have a hybrid rule where it is only implemented at that point.
The reason we have 162 games in a season and now expanded play offs most like my going forward, is one word – money. It’s all about making more money.
The players wont take a pay cut on the 162 game season. The owners would love to cut that down.
That’s why we have 162 game season.
Agree with all these points. Need to keep the postseason numbers where they are. Teams should not be rewarded for 500 ball.
Remember this when the owners are crying poor this winter.
Somehow they still will.
This is $17.6M per owner per year, without any deductions for the commissioners office. Do some basic math. This is not even worth an above average player on the free agent market
Sure, but it’s also only for a small piece of all broadcasting. If you make it through the second paragraph, the larger point is that all broadcasting revenue streams are going up dramatically. Which makes sense, because sports is one of the only things anyone watches live with commercials anymore.
Every team lost money this year with no fans in the stands. Even with these record TV deals, teams generate up to 40% of their total revenue from game day fan attendance. If 2021 starts with no fans or limited fans, free agency is going to be a disaster this year and it’s going to lead to a lockout or strike with the CBA expiring at the end of 2021. Let’s hope they can create a viable vaccine and put an end to this pandemic sometime this winter. Otherwise, baseball is in real trouble.
Where are you getting your numbers? Because if you get your information from teams, teams will always tell you they’re losing money. Especially look out for teams owned by the same people who own the networks where their games are broadcast–they’ll claim losses while underpaying themselves for the rights.
“teams will always tell you they’re losing money”
Lol…say what, now?
I get that there is a real backlash these days about *anyone* (oh no. not people who own things.) making money.
But, for someone who asks, “where are you getting your numbers?” this is blatantly false, bro.
The closest one can even get to “proving” your assertion is when DeWitt claimed baseball is not all that profitable. I don’t necessarily agree with that either.
Wouldn’t mind an example (even one!) in regards to *any* MLB owner claiming they are losing money.
So.
I mean, basically the whole history of baseball owners, but if you want a fun example, Bud Selig once told Congress that only 9 of 30 teams were profitable, prompting Forbes to do a deep dive and conclude that 20 were profitable. Not to mention teams are still appreciating in value even when things are lean short term.
The only team we can use as a barometer is the Atlanta Braves since they are owned by a public company. They had record baseball related revenues in 2019 of $438M and posted operating income of $54M; however, this number does not include amortization or depreciation. After factoring that in, the Braves lost $32M in 2019 after record revenues. With between 30-40% of this revenue coming directly from fans (league average), tell me how ANY major league franchise turned a profit in 2020 with no ticket sales or stadium revenues. While salaries were pro-rated in 2020 for 60 games, so were the TV broadcasting revenues. As a financial professional, I do not see how any MLB team turned a profit (even OIBDA) with no fan generated revenues. Owners hate losing real money (negative cash flow), so this off season is going to be ugly for the mid-level free agents as the normally tight-fisted owners will be much more so after a season where they all lost money.
(patiently still waiting for one actual example of an owner claiming they’re losing money… note: this does not include a commissioner’s statement)
(Jeopardy theme song continues to play)
That commissioner was a team owner, so it was a statement from an owner. It was also specifically his job to lobby on behalf of owners, not just because he was commissioner and an owner, but because he became commissioner in the first place because the owners pushed out the previous commissioner for not being pro-owner enough.
Some of those are fair points (I’m not arguing that empty stadiums aren’t a huge financial hit), but using one team as representative is unfair and I don’t know what kind of financial professional you are (perhaps just an honest one), but claiming a team’s public accounting must be true if they’re owned by a publicly traded company is just plain wrong. Even a very quick search of Hollywood accounting will offer some hilarious examples.
7 inning doubleheaders won’t last because as soon as fans can return to the ballpark, doubleheaders will revert to separate admission events,
Maybe now teams won’t lobby congress for the right to pay minor leaguers less than minimum wage.
Nope.
Oh, I know. A team owner could light a cigar with burning anti-trust laws while wearing a suit made of TV contracts and still cry poverty to the press.
lol
Why, because the league signed a deal worth $17.6M per owner per year? Please. That’s not even worth an above average player on the free agent market, let alone an entire minor league system worth of plush salaries. Try some basic math.
Once again, if this were the only broadcasting revenue stream, this would be a good point you keep making. Also, teams should have always had to pay minor leaguers at least minimum wage.
Why? They are providing players with benefits worth way more than minimum wage. If the overall compensation package these players receive was as bad as you say, you would see more of them going to work full time year round at the Jiffy Lube and the Jack In The Box rather than continue to be oppressed
What benefits are you citing? Because the benefits are few, the food is often sparse, etc. Plenty of people stay in underpaid fields because it’s their dream. Tons of musicians, actors, artists, and all sorts of other people work for less than a living wage, but very few of them are directly employed by people drawing huge profits (and asset appreciation) from a product built around performative labor. Some of those guys rise to be paid huge salaries, some of them go into coaching, all of them are part of the player development ecosystem, and all of them–like everyone–deserve a minimum wage commensurate with THE minimum wage.
Without getting too far into the weeds, they receive health insurance, which by itself is worth more than minimum wage over one month.
Minimum wage doesn’t come with an “or benefits of equivalent value” asterisk. Wages are wages.
Well, since they are FLSA exempt employees, none of this counts toward the minimum wage. But to be clear, the value of the health insurance benefit is actually more than the teams are paying for it. These guys would have to self insure if not receiving that wonderful benefit, and that would cost a lot more than the group insurance.
Presumably they would get other jobs. This whole line of reasoning is grim. Workers should make minimum wage and also have health insurance.
Health insurance is vital, but you can’t buy food, pay the rent or an auto loan with it. Can’t do it with less than minimum wage, either.
Tuesday Night Baseball could be a fun package.
Agreed. I obviously focused on more of the financial component of today’s announcement — that’s the more notable aspect for the sport as a whole — but I will take any and every opportunity to watch Curtis Granderson talk baseball.
“Baseball is not a widely profitable business.”
— Terry McGuirk
He’s telling you they’re laundering. How much did Loria make on the Marlins sell? And he roped the city into funding much of their stadium.
$3.7B / 30 teams / 7 years = $17.6M. In other words, not even worth an above average player in free agency. So Terry McGuirk seems to have a better handle on baseball finances, and for that matter 6th grade math, than most on this board.
This is one single agreement. Some teams rack in over 100M from their local tv deal, then tickets, concessions, advertising, parking, merch, etc
So your saying because they don’t make money on one tv deal that baseball therefore not profitable? All you have to do is look at the Braves a publicly traded company. They show the books and let me tell you owners are all lying playing poor. Also tell me if I ran a business and was making buckets of money why would I give away chances at more money by saying “hey making lots of money here don’t need anymore”. No these owners are billionaires for a reason they are ruthless. And they are liars. Instead of trashing ppl on this site with your fancy 6th grade math look into the facts. Look at the Braves. None of these teams are poor, they are just playing poor since COVID showed they can make it thru a season with less staff the initially thought.
The Braves are one of the more successful franchises and while they were cash flow positive in 2019, they actually lost money on their financial statements. Most teams have massive debt on their books from stadium builds, renovations, etc…and these are all real costs to running a baseball team. And for those who own their broadcasting networks, all people look at is the revenue generated by their baseball airing rights but forget these businesses have $10s if not $100s of million dollars in operating costs. The true value to owners is that (with fans) they can be cash flow positive, yet lose money overall and avoid paying taxes on earnings. If you have $4 or $5B sitting around, there are much better investments than buying a MLB franchise.
Appropriately leave out the regional deals where the money’s at. ARZ – one of the 3 worst MLB teams this year – signed a $1.5B/20-year deal ($75M/year) in 2015. Sure, that’s only 1 team, but multiple teams including LAD have signed larger deals even more profitable and with the new standard appearing, you can expect other media deals to look similar. This Turner deal wouldn’t benefit from a majority of the schedule, like the regional deals would, though they would covering important postseason matchups.
Now add in the other two media contracts and try your 6th grade math on that. I will save you the trouble, it’s around $50M per team per year, which is serious money where most people live. But even if you don’t accept that, these teams aren’t selling for $2B+ because the sellers and buyers don’t have a handle on baseball finances, but because they do.
EACH and every team will have $42.1 million in additional revenue for the 2021 season between this TV contract and the extension with Fox that goes into effect next season. That is a 70% increase over 2020.
All teams will get an additional $14.2 as their share of the money from the expanded playoffs this season.
Most teams also have escalator clauses in their TV contracts so they will get more money each season for their local TV contracts. Many teams own part of the TV channel their team is carried on as well.
No owner can claim poverty and be believable.
And this is one more reason why playoff expansion is inevitable.
Starting to believe DeWitt and Ricketts have/are pushing for this said expansion.
Farcical comment to you. Perhaps this was the intent behind it.
Whether you’re rich or poor your interpretation of how much money someone else makes is going to be skewed. I would just hope sports owners in general are as ethical running a business as you would any other business.. But I’m sure owners are giving themselves subtle raises/never losing money year over year whether it’s a good or bad year. Otherwise the value of a business wouldn’t be growing in the 10-20% range year over year. That’s high end real estate philosophy.
You can’t count on business owners to be ethical. That’s what laws, regulations, and collective bargaining are for.
Well said. I think Manfred and Co. are doing what they can to keep fans interested during the pandemic. Hopefully a strike doesn’t happen but if it does the league will never be the same like it was pre pandemic! Owners were even complaining then…
Ever read Lords of the Realm? When players started making $10,000, owners complained that greedy players were going to destroy the business viability of the game. The singers change, but the song is always the same.
I hope this extension with Turner Sports doesn’t include Chip Carey.
I thought Chip Carey (Jeff Francoeur, Tom Glavine) are with Fox SportSouth. Does he also pull gigs with Turner, too? If so, glad I’m missing them. Thankfully they’ve put Joe Simpson in time-out on radio duty so to not focus so much on pre-game attire, but alas, you still can hear his yelling at the sky.
Not that I care one way or another, just curious why you don’t like Chip Caray?
Chip is awesome, don’t understand why people don’t like him
dang! i have to listen to that all self-important miss ron darling!
MORE MONEY MORE MONEY MORE MONEY!!!!!! All the greed is killing the sport. The average family of four can’t afford to go to a game. Can’t watch a play off game unless you have Cable. Announcers who must think they get paid by the Word because they never shut up! Hit and Run. steeling bases and sacrifice fly’s are becoming things of the past. The old game is changing and not in a good way.
I get to see a ton of stolen bases watching the Rangers, but they just get stranded on base lol.
Exactly. I’m sure MLB can dig up a couple million bucks to give to Hispanic communities and Asian communities so kids have access to baseballs, gloves, and gear.
I can say much the same as a Mariner fan.
yall are too profound
I hope so many people just shut off all of the wild card games this next month, and only watch the DS, CS, and WS just to piss off MLB. I need petitions.
BTW, don’t take this as old man yelling at clouds (because I’m not old), but I just hate the fact that these owners cry poor… after the fact that they made hundreds of millions of dollars for their organization, and much money for themselves. This is all going on while there are teenagers/young adults grinding as hard as they can to make it up to the top despite the fact that there is a tiny success rate, but they do it because they love the sport.
Just sayin, if so many people just turn off the WC games, maybe they’ll realize it’s a stupid idea.
Blah. They stink.
So when’s MLB going to use some of that money to promote baseball to Hispanic children and Asian children in the USA?
I’d love to see more youth from different cultures in America get interested in baseball.
Baseball is a fairly expensive sport to get into, it’d be nice if they supported those causes.
whoops. might have responded to another comment you posted on accident.
Exactly. I’m sure MLB can dig up a couple million bucks to give to Hispanic communities and Asian communities so kids have access to baseballs, gloves, and gear.
Be nice to make baseball more accessible to every child.. Organized sports is ridiculously expensive, so many talented kids playing in fields and back yards instead on a diamond….where talent could be developed properly.
Yes. I have been volunteering at our local little league for a while now (used to play there too). They posted something on social media about how 15 years ago they had to replace their wooden light poles with metal ones to meet the little league safety standards, and to this day they still have 11,000 dollars to pay off on the loan they used. Any extra donations go to paying for those light poles. But what’s bad is that parents don’t seem to care anymore. Now it’s drop your kid off and leave while they practice or even play. They don’t even leave to go to work, they just leave because they don’t want to be there.
Expanded playoffs? I am hoping that a sub-500 team makes it into the playoffs and wins the WS. Continue the farce.
Might happen this year, probably wouldn’t ever again in any sort of a 100-162 game season
In an off-season full of RFA walk a ways and any and every other way they can find to cut salaries, the “we’re broke” will be amazing to see if anyone in management can keep a straight face while saying that.
I don’t know a ton about other owners in MLB (outside of the obvious like Steinbrenner) but having an owner like the late Mr. Illitch was awesome! Alot of what he made he put right back into the team, sometimes even too much so. Like the year (I believe it was 2012) when Victor Martinez went down in Spring Training so tti replace him and not to lose a step he went and signed Prince Fielder to that enormous contract. Now did it work and end up helping the Tigers to a ring? No, it didn’t. But above all else you could always tell he was a fan of his own team and tried so hard to get that elusive championship for Detroit before he died. We didn’t get there but baseball was relevant again in Detroit for the 1st time in forever. We’re going to have MLB and the MLBPA saying each of the other is the “greedy” ones and pointing fingers. The truth of the matter is both are greedy and if they have a work stoppage in 2021 when the CBA runs out, it could get very ugly. We go to games and we pay the $6 for a hot dog and the $9 for a beer. And the last thing we want to hear is pissing and moaning that the millions you’re making as a player or owner ain’t enough!
FTR, Illitch did win championships for Detroit. Four of them. Just not with the Tigers.
And, yes, he was a different breed of owner.
Yes, the Red Wings were awesome as well. But him being a pro baseball player (minor leaguer but still pro) his passion was always with the Tigers. Wish he’d had gotten there but 2006-2013 were still great years with 2 pennants.
I don’t mind the owners crying poor despite that claim being obviously and laughably untrue, it’s to their benefit to try to make people believe it.
But the fans who cry poor on their behalf don’t make a lot of sense to me.
Seems like the owners were able to fend off the repo men long enough to sign this deal, even without cutting the players pay in half.
“It’s also notable that…” not “it’s notable, too, that…”
Please write less awkwardly. Or hire an editor.
Why don’t you worry about what’s being said rather than how it’s said. Im sure you have a Harvard education and all, but not everyone can speak as elegantly as others sir. JS…
Yeah, but he feels better now.
Richt: Steve’s construction is perfectly proper. Your criticism, if adopted, would yield compositions of nothing but blunt declarative sentences. The stultifying result would be a dull and witless narrative. Instead, vary the cadence and structure of your sentences.
LMAO! Niiiiiice….
I mean…if youre going to cry foul on grammar you should try choosing a sentence thats grammatically incorrect first.
The real problem with that sentence isn’t so much what you say. It’s an example of the current writing fad of using dashes where commas belong. Most of the writing I see these days is death by a thousand dashes.
So the actual value of ALL the TV deals is about 45.5M a year per team for the next 7 years. That money gets poured into the Central Fund, representing the lion’s share of about 80M every team (from the Dodgers to the Pirates) gets from that fund.
There’s an easy formula economist Andrew Zimmerman came up with, to wit: take all the base expenses for running a team (farm system, FO expenses, etc.) and figure they get covered from the Central Fund. Obviously there are some differences because of stadium deals et al, but it’s not a bad starting point.
The Turner and Fox deals is $42.1 million per team per season MORE than the previous deals. Each team gets a $42.1 million INCREASE in revenue for 2021-2028. That is a 65% increase from Turner and a 72% increase from Fox.
That does not include the $1.2 billion per season ESPN contract extension which starts in the 2022 season. That is $500 million more than the current contract. That is a $16.67 million increase per team per season.
Nor does that include the additional $14.2 million in additional revenue each team will receive for the expanded playoffs this season.
Hopefully the lame Manfred won’t sell out to communism like the NBA
Whatever they can do to bring in more dollars they will do. Track record shows.
Put the playoffs back and write new rules about blackouts. Add a “Red zone” baseball channel to make extra money.
Not sure a baseball Red Zone channel would generate much interest. Red Zone works because it’s on one day a week for a much more dynamic sport. Baseball Red Zone would be on every day and spend way too much time on watching pitchers throws balls & strikes vs. actual action like the NFL channel does.
Content is king. And MLB has it.
End the infield shift next, Manfred!
Universal DH + 3 batter rule are awesome.
With no shifts, that would be complete.
I hate shifts, but in all honesty how do you tell a team where they can locate there defense? I mean that’s something that is never going to end. But, I’m all about batters learning how to bunt properly and lay it down the 3rd baseline every single time a team shifts on them. If that was the case I think you’d see it come to a slow painful death! Lol
I’m less concerned with these types of deals than I am with the blackout policy which is strangling younger fan interest. I’m assuming the lucrative broadcasting deals are ensuring the blackout policy remains in place and the owners are committed to maximum short term cash flow without regard to the impact on the future product.
Every team just got a $17.8 million per season increase in revenue from TBS, a 65% increase. They will also get an additional $24.3 million per season starting in 2021 from the extension MLB signed with Fox in 2018, a 72% increase.
That is $42.1 million per team in additional revenue for each of the next 6 seasons.
Each team will receive $14.2 million in additional TV revenue from the expanded payoffs this season, even if they are not in the playoffs.
How many teams will actually spend some of that on increased payroll?
I’m generally a fan of the expanded playoffs but the seeding must change.
They also have to adopt firm rules assuming sars-cov-2 is still here next year.
The div winners are deserving of 1-2-3. Earning 2nd place should not give you a better place than a wild card in a tougher div. The 4-8 seeding should be based solely on records & tie-breakers.
As for teams (STL, MIA) finishing with fewer games played winning % is not enough.
Wins should matter too. I’m a STL fan but CIN has more wins. If that’s the case
at the end of the Sun, STL has to play DET on MON. It’s the only fair way to determine their seeds. Similarly, MIA might have to play then too. They face the Yanks & PHI, MIL, SF are right on their heels.
If they are still considering potential virus carrying fans at the playoffs, I hope
they take a look at other sporting events. All fans are wearing masks but many slide them down to talk or eat. Few are practicing social distancing. Too many are elbow to elbow. While I expect that out of college students at football games, I was surprised to see it at tennis events too. America’s sports fans just can’t seem to grasp the importance of 6ft of distance even while wearing a mask.