ESPN and Major League Baseball reached a mutual agreement to opt out of their national television contract following the conclusion of the 2025 season. Within an internal memo sent to owners around the league, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred explained that the league was not pleased “with the minimal coverage” that it has received on ESPN platforms through the past several years outside of live game broadcasts themselves. Sean Pendergast and Seth Payne mentioned this news during the Friday edition of Payne and Pendergast on SportsRadio 610 in Houston, in which he summarized the situation to listeners.
ESPN will continue to broadcast Sunday Night Baseball, along with the Home Run Derby and wild-card round playoff games this season. If the two sides are unable to reach a new deal, this would mark the final year of a partnership that has existed since 1990. Pendergast expressed that the sides were not doing anything illegal, simply exercising their right to opt out ahead of the March 1 contractual deadline. Furthermore, he articulated that ESPN did not want to continue paying the reported $550 million annual rights fee for the next three years, with a report from The Athletic stating that the network had deemed it “way above the current market value.”
“And he said it, ‘On a shrinking platform,’” Payne added, referencing a metric conveyed in the internal memo. Manfred divulged that ESPN was available in 53.6 million homes as of last December, which is down from the 69 million metric when it came to terms on the existing deal in 2021. The figure, however, does not align with Nielsen Media Research monthly estimates, according to John Ourand of Puck, who wrote that the figure is “in the mid- to upper-60 million range.”
ESPN reported January as being its most-watched month in a decade, attaining an average minute audience of 1.6 million viewers on the cable network. Moreover, ESPN networks that are rated by Nielsen accounted for 42% of all sports viewership in the month as the platforms continued to air live game broadcasts in football, basketball and hockey, along with popular studio programming and other content.
“They already do business, baseball does, with Apple and Roku on limited packages of games, and Manfred made some decent points in his letter to baseball,” Pendergast said. “I just wonder the thing that popped the headlines was the lack of coverage that baseball’s getting on ESPN, which is 100% true. If you watch shows like First Take and Get Up, there’s no baseball coverage on there.”
Payne replied by averring that the most ESPN discusses baseball is when Stephen A. Smith discusses Los Angeles Dodgers two-way player Shohei Ohtani. In fact, the duo opined that there would be no baseball coverage on ESPN if it were not for Ohtani and New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge. The program also referenced when ESPN decided to cut in on live college football games in progress as Judge chased the American League single-season home run record in the stretch of the 2022 regular-season schedule
“Yeah, Tulsa and East Carolina game gets interrupted by an Aaron Judge at bat,” Pendergast recalled. “Nevertheless, I wonder what outlet is going to have for Manfred what he wants. The next logical one is, ‘Alright, well let’s just throw some more at FOX or FS1 or all of those.’ None of those shows talk about baseball either. They’re all football and basketball-oriented [sports talk] shows.”
MLB conveyed that there has been “significant interest” coming from traditional media companies and streaming services about garnering rights to live game broadcasts. A new agreement would begin in 2026, although it is not known if any deal would span beyond three seasons. Manfred has emphasized interest in local rights being available when the league does national renewals, looking to create packages and selling as many packages as possible nationally while planning to deal with what ends up being left over. ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro has divulged that the company wants “to be part of the solution” surrounding local sports rights as well.
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