North America's Major League Baseball (MLB) competition has announced a new trio of major media rights deals covering its upcoming 2026 to 2028 three-year cycle, with Disney-owned ESPN, Comcast-owned NBCUniversal, and streaming giant Netflix all securing rights packages.
ESPN, which chose to end its long-standing broadcast coverage agreement with MLB at the end of the 2025 campaign, has acquired the rights to sell MLB.TV, the league’s out-of-market viewership offering, across its digital and streaming platforms.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
These rights cover the ESPN app, the MLB Network offering, and also include in-market games for those teams that have local media rights agreements in place with the league, although these will remain available through MLB platforms across 2026.
ESPN may bundle these in-market rights together with ESPN subscriptions or offer them via the MLB.TV service.
MLB claims that MLB.TV drew 19.4 billion minutes watched across the 2024 campaign, a record figure for the service, up 34% on the year prior.
ESPN has also retained a broadcast package of 30 games for national distribution across its linear networks (and the ESPN app), including the Memorial Day game, the post-All-Star Game second-half, the Little League Classic, and more.
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalDataIn terms of streaming, a package of over 150 out-of-market game streams (one per day) has also been made available to ESPN, which will showcase them across the season.
For NBCUniversal, meanwhile, the major US media giant has secured a wide-ranging national broadcast slate that includes ESPN’s former Sunday Night Baseball slot, the Sunday Leadoff game, and all four post-season playoff wild-card round games.
Additionally, NBCU will also retain the Sunday Leadoff slate, which it held between 2022 and 2023, comprised of 18 games staged before or around noon.
NBCUniversal will show these games on its primary NBC linear channel, the new NBC Sports Network (NBCSN), and on its Peacock OTT streaming service.
This will include special event games such as the Opening Day fixtures and Labor Day games, and NBCU will also provide coverage across the MLB season.
Peacock will also “regularly” showcase an out-of-market game-of-the-day.
Elsewhere, Netflix has picked up the rights for live MLB for the first time (though it will show the World Baseball Classic in Japan), showcasing a singular opening night game each edition for the next three years.
Netflix will also showcase the annual Home Run Derby exhibition and the 2026 return of the MLB at Field of Dreams game, as part of a commitment to show a special event game each season, which in the future may also include “MLB at Rickwood Field” or “MLB Speedway.”
All of Netflix’s broadcasts will be self-produced, while NBCU will split duties between itself and MLB depending on the broadcast.
Beyond ESPN, NBCU, and Netflix, MLB also has national broadcast deals with Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery-owned TBS that run through 2028. Fox pays $714.3 million per year, while TBS pays $470 million per year.
These agreements will remain unchanged despite the broadcast reshuffle.
On the trilogy of new partnerships, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred commented: “Our new media rights agreements with ESPN, NBCUniversal and Netflix provide us with a great opportunity to expand our reach to fans through three powerful destinations for live sports, entertainment, and marquee events.”
“Following our last World Series game that averaged more than 51 million viewers globally, these partnerships build on MLB’s growing momentum that includes generational stars setting new standards for excellence, new rules which have improved the game on the field, and increases in important fan engagement metrics like viewership, attendance, participation, and social media consumption.
“We’re looking forward to tapping into the unique areas of expertise that ESPN, NBCUniversal, and Netflix each bring to the sport for the benefit of our fans.”
MLB claims that the 2025 campaign brought “double-digit” viewership increases across its broadcast partners in key demographics such as the 17-and-under and 18-34-year-old categories.
The league added that these increases spanned national, regional, streaming, and international broadcast partnerships.
Up until now, ESPN had paid around $550 million per year for its MLB rights (the package now picked up by NBCU), and it looked unlikely that MLB could command nearly as much from NBC; however, back in August, the Wall Street Journal reported that the league is hopeful of even exceeding that fee, should additional facets of the deal be agreed, with post-season play-off baseball (now successfully agreed) a potential sweetener.
For Netflix, meanwhile, those Home Run Derby rights are reportedly set at $35 million per year, with the rights to the opening night games pushing that deal even higher.
