As had been widely expected, ESPN has officially decided to opt out of its Major League Baseball rights deal after the 2025 season.
“We are grateful for our longstanding relationship with Major League Baseball and proud of how ESPN’s coverage super-serves fans. In making this decision, we applied the same discipline and fiscal responsibility that has built ESPN’s industry-leading live events portfolio as we continue to grow our audience across linear, digital and social platforms,” the Disney-owned sports operation said in a statement. “As we have been throughout the process, we remain open to exploring new ways to serve MLB fans across our platforms beyond 2025.”
The split had been predicted given the downward trajectory of MLB ratings in recent years apart from October playoffs and the World Series and ESPN’s other business objectives. In 2021, the parties had signed a renewal averaging $550 million a year and running through 2028. That agreement contained an out for ESPN in 2025.
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The parting of ways was first reported by The Athletic, which indicated the league was dissatisfied with its decreased presence on ESPN. The company used MLB games and studio shows as a foundational piece of its programming starting in 1990. In recent years, it trimmed the number of weekly games and made studio show Baseball Tonight more of an occasional part of the lineup as opposed to the daily staple it had been for more than two decades.
MLB made a number of rules changes that managed to accomplish the league’s goal of speeding up the pace of play and making the game more appealing on TV. Even so, after enjoying decades of dominance as America’s Pastime in the mid- to late-20th Century, the game has been eclipsed by other pro sports and top-tier college football as a media draw. To a greater degree than other major sports, the TV appeal of baseball is greater among local and regional fans following their favorite team than among a general population tuning in to see a national matchup.
The opportunity to opt out arose as ESPN is preparing for one of its biggest initiatives of its existence: the launch this fall of a stand-alone streaming service aimed at cord-cutting sports fans. Ahead of that highly anticipated debut, it has been looking to lock in certain rights, extending carriage of the NBA in an 11-year renewal signed last summer and reconsidering others given the larger austerity efforts occurring companywide at Disney and other media companies.
The move comes amid the splintering of rights packages as leagues chase more money. MLB itself carved out packages in recent years for Apple, Peacock and Roku as a way of maximizing revenue.
Late last year, Warner Bros. Discovery’s Turner Sports lost its longtime NBA deal as NBCUniversal, Disney and Prime Video each set 11-year deals collectively worth $76 billion.
The NFL, which signed its own 11-year, $111 billion deal in 2021 with Paramount Global, NBCUniversal, Fox Corporation, and The Walt Disney Company, remains the biggest prize. There, also, streamers are making inroads with Netflix securing rights to an NFL doubleheader on Christmas Day last year. A change of corporate ownership also triggers an out in the NFL’s rights agreements, meaning if the Skydance-Paramount merger goes through, the parties could be revisiting their pact by 2026.
The NFL has been increasingly willing to turn to streaming as a way of driving more distribution revenue and expand the audience for football. Games carried on streaming skew younger, in line with a key strategic priority for the league.