Manfred, Pitaro give updates on new MLB rights deals
Manfred, Pitaro give updates on new MLB rights deals
The MLB commissioner says deals are essentially done, while the ESPN chair says ‘good progress’ has been made.
Things haven’t moved much in the last month on the MLB front. Of course, this doesn’t refer to the race towards the playoffs on the diamond, but to the negotiations for nailing down the league’s media rights deals in 2026. It seems things are inching forward, according to new comments from Rob Manfred at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit on Tuesday.
Key Details:
- Sliding into home: Manfred says that the league has “agreements in principle” for its next media agreements.
- ESPN holding: Jimmy Pitaro of ESPN didn’t have a lot of news to offer.
- All in one?: Manfred says he thinks all 30 clubs’ local rights stand a good chance of being available in 2028.
Both Manfred and ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro were in attendance at the Tuned In conference this week, and both had plenty to say. Manfred dropped the news that the league has “agreements in principle” for the media rights that were surrendered by ESPN in February. Those rights include a package of regular-season games, wild-card rights, and the Home Run Derby broadcast.
The commissioner says that the deal will be a “plus” for MLB reach and distribution, and that the league has “essentially replicated” the revenue it would have made from ESPN had the network not opted out of its deal with MLB. That agreement paid around $550 million per season.
Reports have indicated that Netflix will get the Home Run Derby through 2028 in the new deal, and that NBC and its streamer Peacock will also be involved. ESPN is allegedly back in the mix as well, with what’s been described as a “framework agreement” to distribute out-of-market regular-season games digitally, as well as in-market rights for five teams. All of these deals will run through 2028.
According to FOS, ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro was in a mood to neither confirm nor deny any MLB reports during his appearance at the summit.
“When I last spoke publicly, I said that conversations were healthy, and I would say, since then, we’ve made good progress,” Pitaro said. “I don’t want to go farther than that, but we’ve certainly made good progress with [MLB commissioner Rob Manfred] and his team.”
From the sound of those comments, it seems as if the delay in finalizing the deals is somewhere in the details, either on ESPN’s side or another of the broadcasters MLB wants to team with. I’d guess that final agreements are coming soon, but we’ve been saying that for a few weeks now.
Pitaro did offer a hint about ESPN’s ambitions, saying that local rights to MLB teams were “super interesting” to the channel. Manfred may be willing to sell ESPN some local rights until 2028, but he said in the course of his comments that local rights to all teams in the league will be available to package starting that year. However, he isn’t looking to sell all local rights in one package.
“If I had to guess today, we would have the availability of all 30 clubs,” Manfred said. “The best I can do for you right now is [that] we’re not going to centralize local media as a standalone deal. There will have to be other give-and-takes that make sense.”
MLB’s national broadcast deals with Fox and TNT Sports expire in time for all negotiating windows to align for the league in 2028. It could be a bonanza of a year for the league, which has to take careful steps now to secure its future.
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