“Sunday Night Baseball” might be headed to NBC next season.
NBC Universal made an offer to Major League Baseball earlier this month that would have it take over ESPN’s package of regular-season and postseason games, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Specifics of that deal are not yet known. It’s also unclear when that deal could be finalized, though the two sides have apparently been in talks for several weeks. NBC is offering significantly less than the $550 million per year ESPN is currently paying, per the report.
ESPN announced earlier this year it had “mutually agreed” to terminate its deal with MLB after the 2025 season. That ends a partnership that has been going on for more than three decades. ESPN and MLB were under contract through 2028, but they had an opt-out clause for earlier this year.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has reportedly said the league 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.” Meanwhile, ESPN has been asking for MLB to take a lower rights fee — it reportedly wanted to cut the fee by more than half, down to no more than $200 million per year — but MLB declined.
ESPN started broadcasting MLB games in 1990. It has carried regular-season games, various playoff games, the Home Run Derby, the show “Baseball Tonight” and more. The split marks the latest broadcast transition for MLB, which has reached deals with multiple streaming services in recent years, including Apple TV, The Roku Channel and Amazon Prime. Also, Diamond Sports Group, which ran more than a dozen teams’ regional sports networks, went bankrupt, and that has led some teams to start their own streaming services under the league’s watch.
If NBC is successful in landing baseball, it would mark the network’s latest expansion into the sports world. NBC is preparing to start broadcasting NBA games on the network and on Peacock again next season, more than 20 years after the league left the network.
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