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Thread: ESPN and MLB separate for 2026 and beyond

  1. #1
    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    ESPN and MLB separate for 2026 and beyond

    ESPN and MLB had a broadcast deal which was to last until 2028, but allowed for an opt-out after 2025.

    It was first reported as "mutual", with ESPN feeling that their $550m/year fee was too high for rights to broadcast games, and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred writing to team owners that he has "not been pleased with the minimal coverage that MLB has received on ESPN’s platforms over the past several years outside of the actual live game coverage".

    However, ESPN has since disputed that it was mutual, claiming they simply opted out because the deal no longer made financial sense.

    Yahoo produced a pretty good analysis of the numbers behind ESPN's decision.

    According to the Yahoo article:

    The MLB package last year was ESPN’s 10th-biggest driver of ad sales revenue, trailing the likes of the NHL ($62.8 million), as well as the studio shows Get Up ($79.5 million) and First Take ($96.6 million).
    Apparently ESPN only recovered $58.5m in ad revenue, meaning that just 10.6% of their expenditures on the licensing translated to ad spend. By comparison, fees paid by cable companies to ESPN to carry it almost reached $15 billion, dwarfing the MLB ad revenue figure. Note that the loss of MLB is highly unlikely to cause any cable companies to drop ESPN, as it is considered a major station everyone wants.

    In case you think this is all indicative of less interest in baseball, think again. While baseball interest definitely skews older, attendance at MLB games is doing great, and in fact was at higher levels last year than any time since 2017. However, baseball has become less interesting on a national level, with people in local markets taking interest in their own team, but not much else.

    MLB TV rights are simply not worth anything near what they used to be. That has also wreaked havoc upon local cable channels which paid a fortune to broadcast their market's MLB teams. The ratings simply aren't there. Most baseball fans nowadays either go to the games or watch highlights, but don't sit down to watch a 3-hour game anymore.

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    Owner Dan Druff's Avatar
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    The ESPN deal gave them rights to Sunday Night Baseball, the Home Run Derby and Wild Card playoff matchups, as well as select high profile games.

    ESPN and MLB have been partners since 1990.

    Here is the letter Rob Manfred sent to owners last week:

    As all of you are likely aware, and as set forth in our memo in April 2021 when the current ESPN national media rights agreement was submitted to you for approval, the agreement provides both ESPN and MLB with the right to terminate the deal on or before March 1, 2025, effective upon the end of the 2025 MLB season.


    “Over the past several months, ESPN has approached us with a desire to reduce the amount they pay for MLB content over the remainder of the term. Publicly and privately ESPN has pointed to lower rights fees paid by Apple and Roku in their deals with MLB. We believe arguments based on the Apple and Roku deals are inapt and we have rejected ESPN’s aggressive effort to reduce rights fees for several reasons.


    First, the inventory involved in the Apple and Roku deals is very different from the ESPN inventory. The ESPN deal contains the only truly exclusive regular season windows on Sunday nights, the exclusive right to an entire round of playoffs, and the Home Run Derby, one of the most exciting events of the summer. In contrast, Apple and Roku have games that compete against a complete slate of other games broadcast in local markets. In fact, in the last round of bargaining with ESPN, they declined to purchase the inventory we subsequently sold to Apple and Roku. Second, given the strength of our product we do not believe a reduction in fees is warranted. Sunday Night Baseball ratings were up 6% in 2024 over 2023, which is notable given that 2024 was a summer Olympics year. The 2024 MLB Wild Card Series was the most watched ever, averaging over 2.8M viewers per game, up 25 percent from 2023. Our Home Run Derby is the highest rated skills competition in any professional league. In addition, our demographics are extremely attractive. The overall male/female ratio on ESPN is 73/27 while MLB on ESPN is 68/32, with growth among women outpacing men this year. In addition, our Hispanic audience on ESPN is ~10%, significantly above most other sports on their platform.

    Third, we do not believe that Pay TV, ESPN’s primary distribution platform, is the future of video distribution or the best platform for our content. As of December 2024, ESPN was available in 53.6M homes, down from its peak of over 100M homes in 2011 and 69M homes when we struck the current deal in 2021.

    Furthermore, we have not been pleased with the minimal coverage that MLB has received on ESPN’s platforms over the past several years outside of the actual live game coverage.

    Based on the foregoing, we and ESPN have mutually agreed to terminate our agreement. While ESPN has stated they would like to continue to have MLB on their platform, particularly in light of the upcoming launch of their DTC product, we do not think its beneficial for us to accept a smaller deal to remain on a shrinking platform. In order to best position MLB to optimize our rights going in to our next deal cycle, we believe it is not prudent to devalue our rights with an existing partner but rather to have our marquee regular season games, Home Run Derby and Wild Card playoff round on a new broadcast and/or streaming platform.

    To that end, we have been in conversations with several interested parties around these rights over the past several months and expect to have at least two potential options for consideration over the next few weeks. To be clear, our games will continue to be on ESPN for the entirety of the 2025 MLB season, including the postseason. Any new deal will commence in 2026. I will be in touch with more information as events warrant.

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    Diamond BCR's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dan Druff View Post
    ESPN and MLB had a broadcast deal which was to last until 2028, but allowed for an opt-out after 2025.

    It was first reported as "mutual", with ESPN feeling that their $550m/year fee was too high for rights to broadcast games, and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred writing to team owners that he has "not been pleased with the minimal coverage that MLB has received on ESPN’s platforms over the past several years outside of the actual live game coverage".

    However, ESPN has since disputed that it was mutual, claiming they simply opted out because the deal no longer made financial sense.

    Yahoo produced a pretty good analysis of the numbers behind ESPN's decision.

    According to the Yahoo article:

    The MLB package last year was ESPN’s 10th-biggest driver of ad sales revenue, trailing the likes of the NHL ($62.8 million), as well as the studio shows Get Up ($79.5 million) and First Take ($96.6 million).
    Apparently ESPN only recovered $58.5m in ad revenue, meaning that just 10.6% of their expenditures on the licensing translated to ad spend. By comparison, fees paid by cable companies to ESPN to carry it almost reached $15 billion, dwarfing the MLB ad revenue figure. Note that the loss of MLB is highly unlikely to cause any cable companies to drop ESPN, as it is considered a major station everyone wants.

    In case you think this is all indicative of less interest in baseball, think again. While baseball interest definitely skews older, attendance at MLB games is doing great, and in fact was at higher levels last year than any time since 2017.
    However, baseball has become less interesting on a national level, with people in local markets taking interest in their own team, but not much else.

    MLB TV rights are simply not worth anything near what they used to be. That has also wreaked havoc upon local cable channels which paid a fortune to broadcast their market's MLB teams. The ratings simply aren't there. Most baseball fans nowadays either go to the games or watch highlights, but don't sit down to watch a 3-hour game anymore.
    These are quite a bit like unemployment numbers. Fake. Like they are real for maybe half the markets, but not indicative of overall financial health. Like the Dodgers drew 3.9 million last year and Cleveland drew a little over 2 million. In a market 1/10th the size of LA, that seems great. But every ticket for the Dodgers game other than a few giveaways is sold for the normal price originally before they head to the secondary market where you shop for premium games.

    But Cleveland has all these deals. I can buy a left field ballpark pass for $49 for every game in the month that is the HR area to left. That is like $3 or $4 a game. I can buy a district ticket for $20 for right field that includes a free large beer, which cost $14 by itself. Pittsburgh has the same ballpark pass for $74 for every game of the month. They never had these when I was a young guy who would have taken advantage of them when I was going with a large group of guys and make a party of it.

    I am sure the notion is to draw in younger walkups who live in the downtown areas of all these ballparks and cultivate younger fans, and you do see slightly more young people in them and they hope to make their money on alcohol and concessions. I don't know how much alcohol they sell as kids don't drink a lot like we did, but they do eat a lot and these increased attendance by 41% in the first year in Cle. We would draw like 1.2 straight up, and even then, I am always sitting in the front few rows for a ticket bought on the secondary market for like $90 that originally sold for $150 face value on a weeknight.

    The Pirates drew like 1.7, I would guess a million if not for shit like this. I see probably close to half the ballparks doing similar stuff post-Covid.


    So the attendance numbers league wide are really fake. If Cle drew a real 2 million of tickets priced like they always were up until 4 or 5 years ago, our fans would be losing their minds at our cheapness. But everyone knows the totals are way fake and inflated and we are just happy to have a team and celebrate off season signings of washed guys for $3 million. We are grateful to have a well run cheap team. Take away the sold-out weekend series against the Yankees and you'll see an average weeknight game where those almost free tickets are 50% of the crowd.

    LA isn't the norm where you're seeing higher ticket prices every year and huge demand. That is like 8 teams. Baseball isn't in trouble, but it is certainly trending more towards hockey than the NFL. Kids don't watch 3 hour NFL games either, yet they aren't ditching those deals. Kids don't sit and watch whole games of anything from what I see. They aren't replacing us as quickly as we are dying. And it's not the NBA which is struggling a bit with viewers in the US, but exploding around the world.

  4. #4
    Diamond dwai's Avatar
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    lol ESPN is woke trash, who watches ESPN

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    Plutonium Sanlmar's Avatar
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    BCR is correct. The numbers are fake and subsidized attendance is not gonna make a case.

    The competition for eye balls is unprecedented these days and MLB will learn to accept its fraction. Even your alleged older viewers have options they never had before.

    I’ve never been less interested. I’m just “less” interested than I used to be. It’s not binary.

    ESPN is strapping up finally

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