Is ESPN’s loss set to become Fox’s gain? It could well be so, especially after comments made by Fox Corp. COO John Nallen at a Deutsche Bank conference on Monday. Nallen spoke about the opportunity to add more live sports to the Fox lineup, and MLB rights were one of the programming items he singled out as a possibility for the network to pursue in the near future.

Key Details:

• Nallen called live baseball games a “great product” for Fox.
• He noted that few marquee sports rights are set to hit the market in the next few years.
• MLB is preparing for its last season on ESPN after a 36-year relationship.

At the conference, Nallen said that live MLB games were an excellent draw for Fox. The network has a collection of regular season and playoff games, including the World Series and the All-Star Game. Nallen said that a pursuit of MLB’s current ESPN package could make some sense for his channel.

“What will come to market in some form will be some baseball product, particularly after baseball and ESPN announced that after the season their relationship would change,” he said. “So, baseball has been a great product for us and we’ll probably look at that and look at it in the context of how it makes sense to us overall.”

Nallen’s answer addressed a question of whether he thought Fox’s sports portfolio was complete. He said that there simply weren’t many high-profile sports rights currently available or set to hit the market in the next few years and that Fox wasn’t likely to chase any other sports at the moment.

As things currently stand, 2025 is set to be the last year that MLB games appear on ESPN following a 36-year partnership. The two sides agreed to part ways in February, after an exclusive negotiation period to potentially extend their broadcast deal resulted in the two sides being too far apart in their vision of how the relationship would continue.

Perhaps Fox would try to add more MLB games to boost the profile of its new streaming service? At the same Deutsche Bank conference, Nallen said that the new streamer wouldn't have any exclusive content, so audiences shouldn’t expect to see Fox go after any MLB games with the purpose of making them streaming-only. Still, having more baseball games that could be aired on the new streamer as well as on Fox linear channels makes plenty of sense to attract cord-cutting fans.

Amazon and NBC have also been discussed as potential partners for ESPN’s MLB package, but they could have their sights set on 2028, when all of MLB’s national rights will be up for sale. That could leave an opportunity for Fox to enhance its own baseball rights package for the next few years.