ESPN, MLB to start negotiations before opt-out clause

It’s no secret that ESPN intends to exercise the opt-out clause in its media rights contract with Major League Baseball following the 2025 season. In recent years, the network has pared down its national MLB exposure by cutting its Wednesday Night Baseball package entirely, now airing only one package of MLB games during the regular season.

Per new reporting by Puck‘s John Ourand, ESPN and MLB intend to be proactive about the situation.

Ourand reports that while talks between the two sides have not yet started, ESPN and MLB will begin negotiating a new deal before ESPN can exercise its opt-out clause following next season. The rub is that ESPN isn’t simply interested in a package of national games, the network is after local media rights as well in a new deal.

MLB finds itself in a largely uncertain situation surrounding many of its teams’ local rights after Diamond Sports Group (owner and operator of the Bally Sports RSNs) revealed in federal bankruptcy court its plans to drop all of the remaining MLB teams on its books other than the Atlanta Braves. Diamond has plans to renegotiate deals with certain franchises it plans to drop, though it’s unclear if that will ultimately come to fruition.

Meanwhile, MLB would prefer to bundle some of its team’s local rights together and sell them as a package. Ourand suggests that ESPN executives, including ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro, would have interest in this ahead of the network’s yet-to-be-launched streaming service internally dubbed “Flagship.”

“Pitaro has said that he wants ESPN to be part of the local rights solution. ‘I could easily see a scenario where you have your national games on ESPN or ESPN2 or ESPN+, all of which will be made available as a part of Flagship,’ Pitaro said a couple of weeks ago on The Varsity podcast.”

Of course, ESPN may face competition for local rights from other companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google, who have also shown interest in a bundled local rights product. Nevertheless, it’s a bullish sign for ESPN and MLB that both sides are seemingly willing to go to the negotiating table. But this set of negotiations will be much different than the negotiations of the past.

[Puck]