ESPN, MLB face critical contract opt-out date in March
ESPN, MLB face critical contract opt-out date in March
The worldwide leader might be looking to extract local baseball rights or better contract terms starting next month.
Live MLB games have been a staple of ESPN programming for decades. “Sunday Night Baseball” has been a mainstay on the channel for 35 years. But that could be coming to an end once the 2025 season is over; a new report from The Athletic indicates that there’s a lot riding on a looming contract opt-out date facing ESPN and MLB in the next few weeks, and it could signal the beginning of the end of the relationship between the two.
Key Details:
- ESPN can opt out of the final three years of its contract with MLB in March.
- If it does opt out, MLB might simply walk away from ESPN for good.
- ESPN wants to get its hands on more local MLB rights for its new streamer Flagship.
The crux of the issue between MLB and ESPN is the final three years of a seven-year contract currently in place between the two. In March, ESPN must decide if it will opt out of the contract for 2026-28, and if it does, The Athletic reports that a new deal between the two sides is unlikely.
MLB makes $550 million per season from its TV deal with ESPN, and while it too can technically opt out of the contract if it chooses, most insiders view that as unlikely. ESPN, on the other hand, is expected by many to exercise the opt-out clause, though The Athletic’s reporting regarding MLB’s unwillingness to sign a new deal with the network may give it some pause.
“We talk to ESPN all the time,” MLB commissioner Manfred said at owners’ meetings last week. “They’re one of our big partners … We both have an out in March of this year. Obviously, ‘25 is set. Yeah, we’ll continue to talk to them. And each side will make a decision whether they want to do anything with that.”
Why would ESPN want to opt out of its MLB deal? One possibility is that the channel wants to start negotiations from scratch so that it can get ahold of some MLB local rights, in addition to its traditional national rights. ESPN is planning to launch a new streaming service by the end of 2025, and that platform’s geo-targeting abilities will allow it to air baseball games in the local markets of teams it has the rights to — if it can acquire those rights — like a regional sports network (RSN) can. There’s also word that ESPN is unhappy with the value it is getting from its MLB rights package, so the worldwide leader might be looking to lower its terms.
Is MLB just trying to rattle ESPN’s cage by making it known that it likely won’t do a new contract if the network exercises the opt-out provision, or is the league truly willing to walk away from its long-term cable partner? Only time will tell, but baseball fans won’t have to wait much longer to find out if MLB games will remain on ESPN past the end of the 2025 season.
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