The major television networks are all downplaying their interest in Major League Baseball’s television rights, creating the impression at least that there is no real competitive market for MLB’s broadcast or secondary cable package.
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Networks have been hesitant to make a play
for MLB broadcast rights. |
Fox, in the last year of a six-year, $2.5 billion contract with MLB that includes the rights to the World Series, most of the postseason and a game-of-the-week, has not moved on signing a new deal since its exclusive negotiating window expired at the end of last year. NBC Universal Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol, meanwhile, has indicated he doesn’t think MLB is a good fit for NBC, widely seen as the league’s most likely other suitor.
“It is really hard for us to disengage from our prime-time schedule,” Ebersol said last month at the NFL owners meeting. He called an NBC-MLB deal an “unlikely scenario.”
Ebersol has renounced certain rights deals and then later signed agreements with them before, including MLB in the 1990s and then the NFL last year.
ABC Sports/ESPN, meanwhile, are in talks with MLB about a package that would keep the division series on ESPN and possibly add more postseason and regular-season games to ESPN’s schedule. Meetings between the two were held as recently as last week.
“Yes, we are interested and we’re in ongoing discussions,” said John Skipper, ESPN executive vice president of content, who would not comment further.
Sources said those discussions have focused almost exclusively on ESPN and cable, with no ABC broadcast component being actively considered at this time. CBS has expressed no interest in carrying baseball.
On the cable side, ESPN kicks off a new eight-year, $300 million-per-year rights deal this season, but MLB can still license another 100-plus games to other national cable outlets, along with the division series.
Turner Sports has been in talks with the league about buying rights to the division series games, to go along with its Atlanta Braves national rights deal for TBS Superstation. Comcast’s OLN also has been speaking to MLB.
But at the Octagon/Street & Smith’s World Congress of Sports two weeks ago, officials from both companies downplayed their interest.
Comcast President of Programming Jeff Shell said, “If something is available at the right price we’ll take a look at it, but that’s the question: Is it the right price?”
Turner Broadcasting CEO Phil Kent said the TBS network would consider doing a deal for the postseason, but only if the numbers were right.
Still, MLB officials say there’s plenty of competition.
“We have what every content owner wants, and that is compelling content,” said Tim Brosnan, MLB’s executive vice president of business. He said the market for MLB’s television rights is “robust,” but would not comment on specifics.
MLB officials have not yet decided whether to launch their own cable network and put some games on that, and they have not put a firm number on the table with any of the networks, sources said. Putting an actual dollar figure out to any network would contractually require the league to offer Fox a right to match.
Fox officials have made it clear that they want to pay less than they did under the current deal, in which the company wrote down losses of $225 million. Fox already lessened its MLB burden by transferring cable rights to the regular season and the division series to ESPN, under the sale of the Fox Family Network to ABC in 2001. ESPN has been paying about $100 million per season for those rights.
MLB hopes to sustain or increase the value of that second cable package by possibly putting the entire division series on cable, instead of having up to seven games each year on broadcast television as they are under the current deal.
Staff writer Daniel Kaplan contributed to this story.
