North America’s Major League Baseball (MLB) is reportedly close to completing a pair of new deals that will reshape its broadcast landscape, with media heavyweight NBCU set to pick up a major slate.
According to the Wall Street Journal, NBCU’s NBC linear network and Peacock streaming service are closing in on a $200 million per year, three-season deal that will see it take on the league’s Sunday night games every week through the season.
Those broadcasts will occur on Sunday nights when NBCU isn’t also broadcasting NBA basketball or American football's NFL, both of which the network has rights to. When the Sunday linear slot is taken up by another sport, MLB games will be shown on Peacock instead.
Beginning in 2026, this would run through the 2028 season, taking over from Disney-owned ESPN, which earlier this year announced it would opt out of its long-standing rights agreement with the league after 25 years, three seasons ahead of the deal’s expiry date.
Apple, meanwhile, pays $85 million per season for a Friday night package it has aired since 2022, and it is likely to retain that, while Roku's deal for Sunday afternoon games is worth $10 million per year.
ESPN currently pays around $550 million per year for its MLB rights, and it looked unlikely that MLB could command nearly as much from NBC; however, WSJ said that the league is hopeful of even exceeding that fee should additional facets of the deal be agreed, with post-season play-off baseball a potential sweetener.
Beyond NBCU, Versant, a publicly-traded company comprised of several TV networks spun off by NBCU-owner Comcast, has also recently publicly stated its interest in an MLB rights package separate from the NBCU bid, and could make a play for a smaller package than the current ESPN rights.
In addition to the NBCU deal, MLB is also reportedly set to bring streaming giant Netflix into the fold with the rights to the annual Home Run Derby showcase, set at $35 million per year, also running through 2028.
ESPN may not yet be finished with MLB, however, with the broadcaster set to snap up rights to five of the league’s teams on a local level, while also taking over exclusive distribution of out-of-market regular-season MLB games nationally.
The Athletic has said that ESPN will pay a “substantial” fee for the right to supplant the in-house MLB.TV offering as the primary distributor of out-of-market games, though it is yet to be revealed how this would take shape, with a carriage deal on ESPN’s new OTT service a possibility.
This deal may also see ESPN retain some MLB rights, 30 games per year, although none on its previously vaunted Sunday night slot.
In terms of local rights, the teams ESPN is set to pick up, the Arizona Diamondbacks, Cleveland Guardians, Colorado Rockies, Minnesota Twins, and San Diego Padres, are those five that MLB itself holds the local rights for after the collapse of their deals with the ailing Diamond Sports Group (now known as Main Street Sports Group).
These local rights will include all home games from each team not selected for national TV coverage, as well as ancillary content and shoulder programming.
In recent years, MLB has become frustrated at ESPN paring back its baseball coverage while demanding a reduction to its rights fees, while ESPN has cited deals the league has recently struck with streaming rivals Apple and Roku, which pay significantly less for exclusive games, for seeking a lower fee.
Now, though, a hatchet seems to have been buried between the two.
Beyond ESPN, 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.
The MLB’s deals with ESPN, Fox, and TBS alone will see a combined revenue of $1.76 billion in the 2025 season.
