Posted on 02/21/2025 4:28:14 AM PST by Libloather
It appears Major League Baseball will be off ESPN’s airwaves after the 2025 season.
The two sides “mutually agreed” to cut their national television deal short after this year, according to a memo from MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, via The Athletic.
Manfred has “not been pleased with the minimal coverage that MLB has received on ESPN’s platforms over the past several years outside of the actual live game coverage,” according to the memo.
The league and network had a March 1 deadline to opt out on a deal that would’ve extended their partnership through the 2028 season.
ESPN will continue to broadcast the 2025 Home Run Derby, Sunday Night Baseball, its wild-card round games and other MLB rights through this season.
The parties could still reportedly come to terms on a new deal, though Manfred noted the league is talking to “several interested parties.”
ESPN, who currently pays MLB $550 million per season for broadcast rights, was recently looking to revise the current deal, The Athletic reported earlier this month.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
All to pander to the ‘instant gratification’ crowd.
Yeah - I’m just too old I guess.
I liked it when regular season football games would end after 60 minutes - even
if the score was tied.
season too long, too many games
Yes! I hated the Sunday night games!
My company has Red Sox tickets. Everyone always wants the Sunday 1:30 games because you can take kids.
The next most popular are the Saturday 4:30 games. Then Saturday night. Then Friday night.
Last year he could hardly even give away Monday through Thursday 7:15 start unless they were playing the Yankees.
Of course, the Sox sucked last year. I went to one 4:30 Saturday games against the Brewers.
I’m retired. I don’t like the later games either.
If you had the MLB TV package, you would have been able to watch all Angels games live...Only if you did not live near Orange County, CA...Black out rules apply...Yes, MLB TV costs you extra money...Not part of your usual cable package...
I had free MLB TV package last year because I had Tmobile service...
But that’s exactly the problem. I’m a mild occasional baseball fan at best. Generally I need something “interesting” (whatever that means that day) to be happening. I can go multiple years without seeing a single game. And sometimes I’ll watch a bunch. I’m not buying any package.
But meanwhile this incredible thing was happening, literally a once a century event, a pitcher with a shot at the HR title, and also topping one of the major pitching stats. Where were the games? Why wasn’t MLB smart enough to say “screw the local contracts and MLB package, we need these games on one of the national contracts”? MLB is regularly worrying about declining ratings and attendance, but what are they doing about it? I compare them to the NFL, the NFL is really good at saying “this game is too cool for that contract, get it on a big one”. Even before they formalized the flex scheduling into contracts they still were willing to do that when it was the right idea (think about the Pats last game in the 16-0 season, they slid that from their network to broadcast). MLB should have done that. And yeah that probably would have meant the league wrote some checks to some TV network “we’re moving this game to ESPN, here’s some money” but it would grow the sport and pay them back. And they did this multiple seasons, Ohtani did all kinds of amazing things with the Angels but the team sucked so they didn’t get a lot of national telecasts. They got lucky he moved to the Dodgers.
And now they’re complaining ESPN doesn’t do enough promotional shows to push the MLB. But why should they? If they won’t get the games to show. Should they spend hours talking about all the amazing stuff Ohtani is doing and then finish the show saying “but you don’t live in Orange County you won’t get to watch him”? If they want ESPN to help them then they need to help ESPN help them. Make it easier for them to get “high value” games, the kind of games that drive sports talk shows.
Sorry it’s a pet peeve of mine. MLB is so poorly managed. Drives me nuts.
🤮
That’s the guy. Couldn’t exactly remember his last name.
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