International sports broadcaster ESPN will end its long-standing rights partnership with North American baseball’s MLB after the upcoming 2025 season, triggering a race for the league to secure a new partner before the start of the 2026 campaign.
The pair’s contract, due to run through 2028, included an opt-out clause allowing either side to end the deal after the 2025 season. ESPN triggered that yesterday, ending a 35-year relationship with the league.
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In a statement, ESPN said: “We are grateful for our longstanding relationship with MLB and proud of how ESPN’s coverage super-serves fans.
“In making this decision, we applied the same discipline and fiscal responsibility that has built ESPN’s industry-leading live events portfolio as we continue to grow our audience across linear, digital, and social platforms.
“As we have been throughout the process, we remain open to exploring new ways to serve MLB fans across our platforms beyond 2025.”
The network aired its first MLB game in 1990, but the pair’s relationship has become strained in recent years.
MLB has been 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.
ESPN pays around $550m per year for its rights to air 30 games nationally, 25 of which were “Sunday Night Baseball,” the opening night game each season, and the Home Run Derby.
Apple, meanwhile, pays $85 million per season for a Friday night package it has aired since 2022, while Roku's deal for Sunday afternoon games is worth $10 million per year.
In a note to team owners yesterday, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred suggested the league is happy to step away and test the market’s appetite for its rights.
He said: “Over the past several months, ESPN has approached us with a desire to reduce the amount they pay for MLB content over the remainder of the term. Publicly and privately, ESPN has pointed to lower rights fees paid by Apple and Roku in their deals with MLB.
“Given the strength of our product, we do not believe a reduction in fees is warranted.”
Manfred also dismissed ESPN’s offer to host games on its soon-to-be-launched streaming platform, adding: “We do not think it's beneficial for us to accept a smaller deal to remain on a shrinking platform.
“In order to best position MLB to optimize our rights going into our next deal cycle, we believe it is not prudent to devalue our rights with an existing partner but rather to have our marquee regular season games, Home Run Derby and Wild Card playoff round on a new broadcast and/or streaming platform.”
MLB drew its largest live attendance figures in seven years, drawing more than 71.3 million fans into ballparks in 2024. Television viewership of games, including on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball, also increased.
The league will now start the process of finding a new broadcast partner. Manfred said the league is in talks with “several interested parties” for the rights starting with the 2026 season.
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 TSB alone will see a combined revenue of $1.76 billion in the 2025 season.
The move, meanwhile, comes at a pivotal moment for Disney-owned ESPN, which is preparing to launch a new streaming service this year to host all of its live programming, including MLB games.
Commenting on the news, Conrad Wiacek, head of analysis at GlobalData Sport, has said: “For ESPN, it would seem their focus is on [basketball’s] NBA and [American football’s] NFL moving forward.
“With baseball not as popular as it once was, ESPN has pushed back on the fees they were paying citing the equivalent deals with Apple and Roku and looking for a reduction. This seems to be part of a larger company-wide issue at parent group Disney, which is not seeing the growth in streaming it expected, leading to a re-evaluation of some of its assets.
“[The league] will struggle to find an equivalent value elsewhere. However, the fact this decision has been described as 'mutual' suggests that MLB has something lined up, perhaps growing its deal with Apple for US rights and going all in on a global deal with Apple akin to WWE's deal with Netflix.”
