Thursday night may have marked the beginning of the end for a long-standing partnership. ESPN and Major League Baseball jointly announced that they would be ending their television agreement after the 2025 season, three years earlier than expected. Both sides placed blame on each other: ESPN cited the high cost of their $550 million licensing fees, while MLB pointed to ESPN’s declining coverage of baseball over the years. Although there’s a possibility the two could reach a new deal, it’s very possible that starting in 2026, national broadcasts of baseball could be absent for the first time since 1990.
I’ll admit, I’m not a big fan of ESPN’s recent direction. Aside from David Cone being added as a Sunday Night Baseball analyst, the network’s baseball coverage has been lackluster, often focusing more on in-game interviews than the way modern baseball is played and analyzed.
Additionally, SportsCenter and ESPN’s talk shows mostly serve to promote the games they air, and their lack of coverage for certain schools (like Villanova’s 2018 NCAA run) was a well-known joke. Plus, it’s been eight years since Baseball Tonight aired, making it harder for me to connect with ESPN as a 28-year-old when I had a much stronger attachment to it as a child in 2005.
Despite my criticisms of ESPN, it’s hard to see the MLB/ESPN breakup as anything but detrimental to the sport. ESPN is the top sports network in the U.S., and regardless of which network replaces its broadcasts of Sunday Night Baseball, the Home Run Derby, and the Wild Card games, it’s likely to get fewer viewers. The situation could be worse if MLB opts for an exclusive streaming deal, potentially cutting out a large portion of its audience.
More troubling, however, are the potential effects this split may have on the next Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). The last CBA, which came after a contentious lockout in 2022, saw heated negotiations and was a struggle between the league and players’ union.
Early signs indicate that the next round could be just as tense, especially with Rob Manfred already framing a potential lockout as a “positive.” The departure of $550 million in annual revenue from ESPN could make things even more complicated, especially if the league can’t secure a comparable deal with a new network. MLB’s recent negotiations with Apple and Roku, which resulted in significantly lower payments, raise doubts about the league’s ability to make up the lost income.
I truly hope I’m wrong and that MLB can turn this challenge into an opportunity to grow the game. But given the current trends, I’m not confident this will be the outcome.
Leave a Reply