Overall view of Truist Park in the fifth inning throughout sport two of a double header between the Atlanta Braves and the Miami Marlins on August 9, 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Matthew Grimes Jr. | Atlanta Braves | Getty Images
Major League Baseball is nearing a finalized settlement with Disney‘s ESPN, Comcast‘s NBC Sports and Netflix on a new three-year media rights deals for packages of reside video games.
Earlier this 12 months, ESPN opted out of its $550 million-per-year deal for Sunday Night Baseball. That package deal can be break up into two components for 2026-2028, if a deal closes.
An settlement hasn’t but been finalized and should still disintegrate.
Under the phrases at present being mentioned, NBC would purchase all the league’s Sunday evening video games and Wild Card playoff video games for about $200 million per 12 months, based on folks acquainted with the matter. Netflix will get the rights to the Home Run Derby for about $50 million a 12 months, based on two folks acquainted with the deal.
ESPN is getting a model new package deal of rights for $550 million, based on folks acquainted with the matter. ESPN has roughly assigned about $450 million in worth to license MLB TV, the league’s digital out-of-market package deal of video games.
ESPN would additionally purchase in-market video games to 5 native groups — the Cleveland Guardians, San Diego Padres, Minnesota Twins, Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies — and will get a new mid-week package deal of nationwide video games.
MLB, NBC, ESPN and Netflix all declined to remark on the deal.
The three-year deal for the Sunday evening video games, Wild Card playoff video games and Home Run Derby would imply all the league’s main media rights expire after the 2028 season.
On an apples-to-apples foundation, MLB did not recoup the cash misplaced by ESPN opting out of its seven-year Sunday Night Baseball three years early. Still, it will imply that MLB developed new media partnerships with NBC and Netflix, which might each be bidders for extra MLB video games after 2028. That could also be useful for the league from each a financial and attain foundation.
The talks come as the standard TV enterprise has been bleeding customers for years and as streamers look to get into profitable sports deals.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred despatched a memo to the league’s groups in February saying that ESPN had requested the league to “reduce the amount they [ESPN] pay for MLB content over the remainder of the term.”
ESPN used to air six MLB video games per week, nevertheless it dropped to a few video games per week about 20 years in the past, and went all the way down to only one per week in 2022, that means it was paying $550 million a 12 months for roughly 30 video games.
But the MLB did not wish to renegotiate. Manfred additionally wrote that he took concern with the standard TV mannequin and felt that ESPN wasn’t doing sufficient to advertise baseball.
“We do not think it’s beneficial for us to accept a smaller deal to remain on a shrinking platform,” he wrote to MLB owners in the memo first obtained by The Athletic.
— CNBC’s Michele Luhn contributed to this report.
— Disclosure: CNBC’s guardian firm Comcast additionally owns NBC Sports.