MLB Nears Media Shake-Up: ESPN, NBC, Netflix In, Apple Out?

MLB appears on track to solve its near-term rights conundrum.

Kendall Baker of Yahoo Sports reported Tuesday that Apple’s time with Friday Night Baseball would come to an end while NBC and its streaming service Peacock are poised to possibly pick up MLB’s Friday and Sunday night rights, as well as the Wild Card playoff round. Netflix, meanwhile, is expected to get the Home Run Derby. Bloomberg first reported on Netflix’s potential involvement last week. 

At the same time, the Yahoo report said ESPN is in talks to subsume MLB’s pioneering MLB.TV, the out-of-market package that has become a gold standard for streaming over the past two-plus decades.

Industry sources told FOS that the local piece is also of particular interest to ESPN. Nearly a year ago, ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro said he wanted the network to be an answer to the ongoing decline of regional sports networks. To that end, it’s possible that ESPN will become involved in distributing local MLB games, particularly for the five teams currently operating through the league’s in-house production and distribution model. 

Spokespeople for MLB, ESPN, and NBC declined to immediately comment. 

In a certain sense of irony, the technical backbone that originally powered MLB.TV helped MLB Advanced Media to form BAMTech, which ESPN parent company Disney later acquired across multiple tranches, spanning six years, for a total of $3.8 billion. BAMTech is now known as Disney Streaming. Along somewhat similar thematic lines, ESPN recently swapped a 10% equity stake valued at $2.5 billion for the rights to most of NFL Media’s key assets, including NFL Network and the trademark to NFL RedZone.

ESPN opted out of the final three years of its MLB rights earlier this year. The rest of MLB’s national media rights, including those with Fox Sports and TNT Sports, expire in 2028. 

Earlier this week, league commissioner Rob Manfred said on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball that “We’re having very detailed conversations with a number of parties, including ESPN. We hope to have it resolved in the next couple of weeks. It’s a little bit like a jigsaw puzzle.”

Pitaro echoed that hopeful sentiment on Tuesday. After a previously fractured relationship, there has been ongoing dialogue about rebuilding a 35-year tie between the two organizations, albeit in a different context.

“We are engaged [with MLB],” Pitaro said. “What I’ve said is that we’re having healthy conversations with them. There’s nothing to announce today, but we’re very interested in baseball in general, but also local content.”

Should Netflix, still in the midst of a substantial growth wave, succeed in landing Home Run Derby rights, it could also be a blow to Fox Sports. Network sources told FOS that it had interest in expanding its presence in MLB’s All-Star week beyond the Midsummer Classic itself. 

For Apple to be out after this season, there would have to be some extra maneuvering, as the tech giant signed a seven-year deal reportedly worth $85 million per year in early 2022, taking the partnership through the 2028 season. Sources, however, cautioned that none of the potential partners is entirely out of the mix at this point.