In a move that was rumored to be coming, but the implications for which are still unclear, Major League Baseball and ESPN have preemptively broken up.
That is to say, they’ve mutually decided not to continue their national broadcast deal after this 2025 season:
BREAKING: ESPN and MLB are no longer national TV partners after this season. They "mutually agreed" to opt out of the final 3 years of their deal, per a letter obtained by The Athletic. www.nytimes.com/athletic/614…
— Evan Drellich (@evandrellich.bsky.social) 2025-02-20T23:02:00.734ZPer the report, ESPN wanted MLB to take a haircut to keep its games going on both the channel and the upcoming direct-to-consumer streaming app (there was a mutual opt-out available March 1)). But MLB would prefer to take those rights to market and see if some other entity would be willing to pay more and/or deliver a larger (or better future-proofed) audience. In other words, ESPN didn’t really want to continue to current deal as it is currently structured, and MLB didn’t really want to tweak the deal to stick with ESPN.
What happens next is that MLB will probably solicit some bids from other streamers for a package of games (not necessarily just Sunday Night Baseball), the playoff rounds that ESPN gets, and the Home Run Derby. A package could include those games, yes, but also some more, or some less. Basically, it’s an open field for MLB with respect to a big chunk of its national rights, and I expect they’ll want to proceed carefully in light of not only the changing landscape, but also the fact that it wants to centralize the local rights as much as possible. I would expect any new deal, then, to be short-term (or have early opt-outs, like a late-signing Scott Boras contract).
All that said, it’s hard to imagine MLB and ESPN actually fully separating after this season, given that games have been airing on ESPN for 35 years, but the times they are a-changin’. You have to go where the dollars and eyeballs are going to be, and increasingly, they are not at any legacy cable channel (and we don’t yet know what ESPN’s streaming app will be, in terms of user adoption). I’ll reserve judgment on whether this will ultimately be a good thing or bad thing for fans when the time comes.
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