ESPN and Major League Baseball came to a mutual agreement last week to end their national television media rights deal following the upcoming 2025 season. Both companies released statements explaining their reasoning to its stakeholders, which will ostensibly result in the cessation of the current structure involving Sunday Night Baseball broadcasts, wild-card round playoff presentations and other elements of the partnership. This will also end a 35-year partnership first established in 1990, and former Miami Marlins team president David Samson believes there is no resolution between the two entities in this situation.
During the latest edition of the Nothing Personal podcast, Samson broke down the situation from his perspective and articulated that the exercise of the opt-out was obvious but that it was clearly a one-sided decision. A report from John Ourand of Puck divulged that ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro alerted MLB commissioner Rob Manfred of the decision on Thursday morning and sent a letter overnight formalizing this transaction. ESPN cited “fiscal responsibility” within its statement, something on which Samson elaborated while the network could face a dearth of options in the summer months on its forthcoming Flagship direct-to-consumer service.
“You need to have content, but ESPN is telling you, ‘We’re covered. Somehow, we will find something to show during the summer when we are asking people to pay a monthly fee for our new, unbelievably announced by Bob Iger and everybody else at Disney, this amazing Flagship,’” Samson said. “‘Jimmy Pitaro, we are so proud of what we’re doing. Meanwhile, we’ll do it without baseball.’ Maybe ESPN was saying to itself, ‘No, no. We’re going to opt out of this deal with Major League Baseball, and then we’re going to do a renegotiation.’”
Samson articulated that listeners could “put a pin in that” and proceeded to convey how MLB likely assumed it could do better and decided to find out by taking its rights to the open market. Ourand reported on Monday night that the league has held discussions with Amazon and Netflix while also having informal conversations with officials from Skydance Media and receiving additional interest from NBC. A letter from Manfred to MLB owners obtained by The Athletic divulged that the league expects “to have at least two potential options for consideration over the next few weeks,” although it did not reveal any further details.
“Summer has always been the time when baseball’s providing hundreds of hours per team of programming,” Samson said. “A hundred sixty-two games. What used to be three hours, but we’ll still call ‘three hours’ for purposes of this conversation, that sort of inventory is simply the best, so Major League Baseball is out looking.”
Samson utilized a simile to emphasize that baseball to ESPN was akin to the person who someone takes for granted and then realizes that they needed them upon their departure. From there, he emphasized that ESPN would realize that while the grass is the same color on the other side of the fence, it would be something that the network would miss badly.
“For those of you who think that this was simply a negotiation where ESPN and MLB are going to cut another deal and there’ll be more inventory for the same money, more jewel events, more possibly playoff games, postseason games – NGTH, it’s not going to happen,” Samson said. “The next thing you’re going to hear is MLB with a new broadcaster. How interesting that will be.”
In prognosticating how people will be able to evaluate the residual effects of this dissociation, Samson pointed out how MLB would be able to back its decision when announcing a new deal with a value higher than $550 million, which is what it was reportedly receiving from ESPN on an annual basis. Conversely, the success of ESPN in this manner, he stated, would be discernible during future earnings calls if the company gives out subscription numbers or does not provide such information.
“This is not a negotiating situation where they’re going to make an announcement holding hands together saying, ‘Everything’s great. We’re good. We have a brand-new deal coming up.’ MLB and ESPN will not renew – it’s done. The irony is that there are people out there who are going to try to convince you that this means something it doesn’t.”
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