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
Karl Ravetch is the commentary GOAT
You need a high IQ to understand the genius of Ravetch, Perez, and Cone. If it seems like they’ve done no prep work on the players and teams on SNB, that’s just part of the experience — the game unfolds and we, the viewers, learn and grow along with the commentary team
I’m tired of listening to Perez talk about how good his dad was and cone taking long bathroom breaks during the broadcast, I like the tbs broadcasting team 10x better
I hate to say it but I would rather have espn use Joe buck again because he had a good voice and has gotten better ever since the Minneapolis miracle
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.
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…..
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
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…