ESPN’s Baseball Back Door Could Be a Local Rights Deal

There could be a back door, of sorts, that allows ESPN to get back into the business of broadcasting Major League Baseball. 

The Disney-owned network, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, has been in conversations with Main Street Sports about placing content from that company’s regional sports networks within ESPN’s forthcoming direct-to-consumer streaming service, informally called Flagship. 

A potential streaming bundle deal between Flagship and Main Street Sports’ FanDuel Sports Network would tie into several emerging trends at once. A deal, if completed, would:

• Allow ESPN to have MLB content at a lower cost. The recently reorganized Main Street Sports has rights to nine MLB clubs in its portfolio after the return of the Reds in January. ESPN, meanwhile, is opting out of the last three years of its national-level MLB deal, objecting to the $550 million per year fee, and those rights will terminate after the 2025 season.
• Give a further boost to Flagship, which remains one of Disney’s most pressing corporate priorities. Having baseball in the summer would likely help reduce subscriber churn, even ESPN has shown confidence in addressing the schedule gap through other entities such as the NBA, NHL, WNBA, and US Open tennis. 
• Tap further into an industry pull toward streaming bundles that are showing greater effectiveness.
• Allow ESPN to be a partial answer to the highly challenged realm of regional sports media. Last summer, ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro said he wanted to “be at least part of the solution.” 
• Supplement ESPN’s national coverage of the NBA and NHL with additional regional games.

Thematically, an ESPN–Main Street Sports deal would also bear some similarity to the RSN operator’s separate distribution deal with Amazon that makes individual networks available through Prime Video as an add-on option. The Amazon deal is not exclusive, and it was always contemplated that Main Street Sports would strike additional distribution agreements. 

ESPN and Main Street Sports declined to comment. In a recent statement regarding the split from MLB, however, ESPN said, “We remain open to exploring new ways to serve MLB fans across our platforms beyond 2025.”