In February, MLB and ESPN each triggered an opt-out clause in their broadcasting agreement for the 2026-28 seasons. That means that as things stand, this is ESPN’s final year carrying MLB games. The network carries an exclusive regular season game every Sunday night, the Home Run Derby, and the Wild Card round of the postseason.
Joe Flint and Jared Diamond of The Wall Street Journal report that NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast, made MLB an offer this month for the package of games from which ESPN walked away. The length of the offer isn’t clear, nor are specifics on the rights fees. However, The Wall Street Journal reports that NBC’s offer was for “much less” than what ESPN currently pays. In February, Evan Drellich and Andrew Marchand of The Athletic reported that ESPN would have owed $550MM annually for the 2026-28 seasons had it not opted out.
Obviously, ESPN determined that price was above market value when it opted out. The network said at the time that it was “open to exploring new ways to serve MLB fans across our platforms beyond 2025.” Diamond and Isabella Simonetti of The Wall Street Journal reported in March that ESPN had indicated it was willing to pay a maximum of $200MM per season during renegotiations leading up to the opt-out date. MLB balked, and the sides agreed to terminate the contract after this season. NBC’s offer is evidently for well below $550MM per year. It’s unclear if it tops the $200MM annual sum which ESPN had floated.
ESPN has carried Sunday Night Baseball since 1990 and the Home Run Derby since ’93. It has broadcast the Wild Card round since that was introduced with the expanded playoff in the 2022 collective bargaining agreement. It seems NBC is interested in acquiring all three of those, though Flint and Diamond write that NBC is not pursuing international/radio rights or access to highlight clips that ESPN currently receives (partially justifying the lower bid).
NBC has an agreement with the National Football League for its Sunday Night Football slate. Last July, it reached an 11-year contract with the National Basketball Association for a package of 100 regular season games and the NBA All-Star Game. (That goes into effect during the upcoming basketball season.) According to The Wall Street Journal report, the network would stream some of its MLB games on its Peacock service when those games conflict with its other live sports. Those interested in the topic are encouraged to read the Wall Street Journal’s report in full.
Anything is better than espns coverage
Al dukes is gonna be livid about this on tomorrow’s warmup show.
Baseball can’t be helping itself when it has 2 teams playing in minor league stadiums. Looks like The ratings aren’t there to be charging such exorbitant fees.
When the games get broadcast on smaller platforms, the ratings will be lower. I don’t subscribe to Peacock, so I won’t be watching, and not because I’m not a fan. When they sell the rights to Apple, and Prime, and Fubu,and Peacock, MLB eliminates a good portion of the potential viewing audience.
Streamers are using live sports as a “loss leader” to get you to stick around for movies and other shows. The most talked about shows on TV are now those on streamers.
BTW, the only baseball Prime Video carries is a midweek Yankees game and that’s geofenced to NY/NJ/CT/NEPa.
That’s the thing; no one subscribes to Peacock, it’s why they pulled the plug on their sunday morning games mid-season last year. Not sure how Roku is doing ratings-wise for their sunday morning games but MLB needs a national tv market for sustainability. If not the future of MLB will look more like the NHL than the NFL
You don’t know what you’re talking about. People DO subscribe to Peacock for things other than sports — and TV companies are not run by chart freaks.
Try understanding that instead of spreading disinformation.
In baseball’s defense Tampa Bay’s crappy stadium was hit by a hurricane. The coliseum in Oakland should’ve been torn down 20yrs ago. The Rays should move to Nashville.
ESPN is making a mistake they’ll have a huge void for Sundays
It’ll match the voids of the other 6 days, good riddance.
Let’s be honest, who decides to watch Sunday night baseball these days just to see the dodgers, Mets, Yankees, or Red Sox play each other all of the time
I usually watch Sunday Night Baseball, just because its the only game on. The broadcast is fine, significantly better than MLBN’s attempt at national games with Matt Vasgersian…. yea, Matt, we know youre doing the game from a New Jersey studio, youre not fooling anyone buddy.
@sad – I couldn’t agree more. Maybe a network who wants Sunday night games should have an afternoon game and a night game. But that being said, it would still always be the same teams that you mentioned. Ugghhh…..
MLB Network does the same thing. Most of their games are either Yankees or Dodgers. It’s like they’re trying to force you into buying a streaming package just to be able to watch other teams.
At least they put on regional coverage with teams that don’t get the spotlight all of the time
They’ll replace it with sunday night Pickle ball.
ESPN is going to have huge voids all around as they have canceled how many of their daily staples amid a ratings crisis that they created by centering themselves around political activism over sports entertainment
Sports have always been political, whether you like it or not. They have always been vehicles that have been used to express both political opinions and for national, regional or local protests. You know how A’s fans protested the cheapness of the owner? That’s called taking a political stance because the right to protest ANYTHING is protected by our Constitution.
The problem here is NBC is committed to sunday night Football and sunday night Basketball immediately following the NFL season. MLB needs a home for sunday night Baseball and NBC isn’t it, unless we start looking at the way they covered the NHL when they had that contract and you had to find MSNBC or one of their other networks for games.
While it would be a novel approach to have a regular prime-time nationally televised game broadcast over the air instead of on cable i wonder why MLB network doesn’t step in and take over the sunday night broadcasts. I think many people would go for that and i would love to see them have every team play a sunday night game in a similar vain as the NFL having every team play a thursday night game
Fox would be a nice fit because what would they air after afternoon football or college basketball after that
But fox is taking less and less baseball games so I think they’re trying to pull out of the sport entirely
I suggested that in a previous thread when ESPN and MLB first announced the split and many pointed out that sunday night games would interfere with the networks prime-time lineup, which may not be desirable to Fox. CBS might be an interesting possibility though
Y’all playing musical chairs with broadcast properties. Musical chairs is a children’s game. Broadcasters are grown-ups (unless they bend the knee).
Fox wouldn’t have any interest in Sunday Night Baseball. They get much higher ratings with their Animation Domination lineup of The Simpsons, Bob’s Burgers and whatever other shows they put between them.
Now that streaming is a thing, NBC would just throw the baseball game on Peacock if there’s a scheduling conflict, because it likely wouldn’t come close to the ratings on their existing Sunday night sports broadcasts.
I could get behind regular MLB Network broadcasts because I much prefer their personnel over the talking heads on other networks, but since it’s owned by MLB, it wouldn’t bring in nearly as much money.
The cable companies have their tentacles in mlb network, too. Since they are minority owners they had no trouble getting clearance for it, as opposed to the nfl network.
Comcast Universal will still retain a stake in those cable channels it is spinning off so we might see some coverage, including SNB on USA.
When the espn deal expires, some places, like New Zealand & Australia, won’t have ANY mlb baseball on TV at all. It’s carried on what you would call cable. So that’s something they need to consider.
I watch highlights, sometimes, on you tube. I cut the cord with our version of cable in about 2016.
Is it worth getting mlb TV? I guess due to my locale I wouldn’t get any blackouts…
It’s totally worth getting MLB TV, if you can afford $150ish annually. Especially in a non blackout location watch anything you want, when you want to. I’m in Europe and that’s what I do.
WELL worth the money, but that’s subjective. Take out a one week trial or something and see if the slipper fits! If you like baseball then I suggest you’ll love MLBTV.
Thank you both for replying. I think I’ll try a trial & see how it goes. Cheers
If youre primarily interested in seeing your countryman the jovial and considerate to animals and downtrodden peoples Liam Hendriks get lit up on a nightly basis, there’s a place I can direct you to in Southie.
Ouch,that hurt me Theo and I’m in San Diego!
And I’m a big Liam fan for all he’s gone thru and his humanitarian work- he’s a huge animal rights guy. But ball don’t lie (ball fly far)
Anything flies that far oughta have a dam stewardess on it! Ha
Only if Joe Garaologa and Tony Kubick are the announcers….
No baseball on ESPN?
Where will I be able to see all the Dodgers & Yankees games then?
I hope NBC works into the contract that they will not hire any ESPN announcers under any circumstances.
And once upon a time, the Commissioner personally approved announcers for the World Series. That ended almost 50 years ago.
As long as A-Roid is nowhere near it, I don’t mind the rest of the ESPN crew, although I would hope they could do better.
No to A Roid , Papi Roid and the other hyenas
Baseball is a non competitive, low action sport heading for a demographic cliff whose issues have been papered over for the past decade by the unique (and universal across sports) rise in TV revenue due to a premium put on live programming due to the shift to streaming.
Might want to try to fix that.
Is this AI? If so goodie for you bot. Stringing together some big words into important sounding structures
Maybe you can have AI or a 9th grader explain it to you, Derp Boy.
66, you sure spend a lot of time in these comment sections for someone who hates baseball so much. And you really offer no intelligent insight whatsoever. The sad thing is you come off as if you think you do.
Neither of you refuted a single thing I said, assuming you understood it.
And baseball doesn’t have to blow. Or die.
Might want to try to fix it.
It’s not a “non competitive, low action sport.”
There are intriguing postseason races every year (except your Pirates of course, so maybe that’s where your ire originates from) and MLB has taken bold measures (by its standards) to change rules to increase the pace and excitement.
I expect those will continue as future ratings come in. Manfred has shown a significant willingness to change the game when necessary. That bodes well for its future.
These types of dire warnings are an overreaction from a fan who cheers for a terrible team.
This means Bob Costas in the broadcast. Barf!
He’s no longer affiliated with NBC and is also “retired” after the last playoff game he did for TBS last postseason.
Unless a game is broadcast over the free airwaves, i dont see it. I dont see many games at all now. Its how the professional leagues want it apparently.
The worst part is turning on the tv on a weekend afternoon and the free channels are golf, golf, nascar, f1, paid programming, AFL, women’s soccer, European soccer, rugby. Anything but baseball. I mean paid programming for christs sake? Wtf
Your “free airwaves” have NEVER been free! Television has always been paid for with advertiser and/or viewer money.
The only ones who don’t understand that are retro freaks, antenna geeks, and dumb sportsball fans.
Signs that trouble looms over MLB…
Screw ESPN, they treat baseball like garbage only care about the NBA and NFL. Anyone is better than ESPN. Their broadcast team for Sunday Night Baseball sucks. Would rather hear the TBS crew. Good riddance I say, ESPN can suck it!
Fox gets Sunday night baseball…NBC gets Saturday afternoon game of the week
Must be some of that good Ohio meth kicking in.
Fox doesn’t want any part of Sunday Night Baseball. They aren’t moving the The Simpsons and Bob’s Burgers for baseball. Just don’t see it happening.
Saturday’s “Game of the Week” on NBC was a beautiful thing, I’m talkin beautiful! Ahahahaha!
As long as the ARod unprepared laughing hyena show isn’t featured
Haven’t really seen ESPN since Joe Morgan was reassuring me how intelligent he was.