After more than 30 years of coverage, the 2025 season will be the last for Major League Baseball on ESPN. Commissioner Rob Manfred told owners in a memo that baseball has "not been pleased with the minimal coverage that MLB has received on ESPN's platforms over the past several years," the Athletic reports. ESPN apparently wanted baseball to accept a lower rights fee, per Yahoo Sports. Payments under the existing deal have been valued at an average of $550 million. Their contract runs through the 2028 season but included a March 1 deadline for either party to opt out of it.
ESPN has carried games since 1990. The deal gave ESPN the rights to show early rounds of the playoffs, the Home Run Derby, and a Sunday night game, per the Washington Post. Manfred was already talking this week about making changes when the contract expired. "The way to address the media issue over the long haul is in our next national negotiations after the 2028 season," he said, adding: "We need more central control over all of the rights, whether they're traditionally national or local. And we should be making an effort to make our product more national because those national games are worth a lot more than games that are sold only in the local market."
The commissioner has said for years his goals include regaining control of local broadcast rights to as many teams as possible to allow MLB streaming free of blackouts. Some local deals have fallen apart, including those involving the recently bankrupt Diamond Sports. More than half of baseball's cities have had to restructure their cable deals, often for less money. Manfred said ESPN suggested MLB agree to a similar reduction, per the Post. Neither ESPN nor MLB has ruled out putting their deal back together at some point. (More MLB stories.)
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