The MLB Cardinals have signed a media-rights deal with Fox Sports, agreeing to a 15-year deal that gives the team an equity stake in FS Midwest. Financial terms were not released, but sources said that Fox will pay the team around $50M in the first year of the new deal, which starts with the ‘18 season. Rights fees payments escalate throughout the deal, which runs through the ‘32 season. The current deal pays the team $30M in the ‘17 season, sources said. Allen & Co.’s Steve Greenberg represented the team during the negotiations. As part of the deal, FS Midwest extended its partnership with Ballpark Village, which means that the RSN will use a 2nd floor studio facing Busch Stadium and will be the naming-rights sponsor of the FS Midwest Live! restaurant in the venue. Cardinals games on FS Midwest generally are among the highest-rated in baseball; at this year's All-Star break, the Cards’ 9.25 rating was second only to the cross-state Royals' 12.06 on FS K.C. Cardinals ratings last year were the highest in MLB. FS Midwest has carried Cardinals games for 22 seasons (John Ourand, Staff Writer).
BIRDHOUSE IN YOUR SOUL: In St. Louis, Derrick Goold in a front-page piece reports the new deal will "continue to feature as many as 150 televised regular-season games." Cardinals Chair & CEO Bill DeWitt Jr. said, "It has a nice increase in rights fees as well as the equity component and as a whole it will allow us to remain as competitive as we have been with our payroll, with our spending in the international markets, with our activity in amateur markets and other ways we have invested in development." Goold notes the agreement is "not an extension of the current deal," which expires after the '17 season. Sources said that the Cardinals' current deal "will escalate" to about $35M in its final year. Based on the expected growth for inflation of the new deal, the annual average rights fee "will be more than double that." It will start close to $55M in '18 and "climb with inflation each year." The total "for the rights fee alone could surpass" $1B, and that "does not include the signing bonus or additional revenue the Cardinals will get from the equity stake" (ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, 7/30).
