Following the news that Apple will stream Major League Baseball games exclusively in a “Friday Night Baseball” package comes reported details on a similar deal with NBC Sports and Peacock.
According to Forbes’ Mike Ozanian, MLB has reached agreement with NBC Sports on a two-year streaming deal that will broadcast the Monday and Wednesday night games given up by ESPN in its new rights deal. NBC will pick up those two weekly broadcasts, which will mostly be streamed on Peacock.
Ozanian did not mention in his report whether or not NBC’s games will be exclusive broadcasts as Apple’s are. When ESPN had the Monday and Wednesday games, those were not exclusive telecasts, still available on each team’s regional sports network. On ESPN, those broadcasts would have been blacked out in local markets, but it’s not yet certain whether or not that would be the case for NBC. That wouldn’t apply if Peacock had exclusive rights.
NBC’s deal with MLB is set to begin this season, whenever it begins after the lockout ends. MLB will earn $30 million per year from the agreement, which has not yet been officially announced.
Coupled with Apple’s new rights deal that will pay MLB $85 million per season (over a seven-year term), the two streaming agreements will bring in $115 million annually. Media and fans might point that out when MLB team owners claim that their franchises aren’t profitable and there aren’t more profits to share with players in this labor dispute.
The timing on these announcements might not be what MLB owners preferred. But as Octagon’s Allan Walsh pointed out, the Apple news came out on Tuesday because the tech company announced it as part of its latest product launch event. Once that became public, news of NBC’s deal with MLB soon followed.
Ian Casselberry is a sports media columnist for BSM. He has previously written and edited for Awful Announcing, The Comeback, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, MLive, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation. You can find him on Twitter @iancass or reach him by email at iancass@gmail.com.
