Now on deck for next sports rights deal: MLB - SportsBusiness Daily | SportsBusiness Journal
Negotiations for the next big sports media deal will begin in earnest this week as Major League Baseball officially takes its national TV rights to the open market.
League executives have been negotiating with network partners ESPN, Fox Sports and Turner for the past several months. But those exclusive negotiating windows have ended without deals. The final window, with ESPN, ends in the middle of this week, sources said, allowing MLB to start negotiations with other networks, like NBC Universal, which has made no secret of its desire to pick up a package of rights for its NBC Sports Network cable channel. NBC has not held MLB rights since 2000 and is eager to bid on them this summer, sources said.
“We think it’s a great property, and given the opportunity, we’d welcome the discussion,” said Greg Hughes, NBC Sports Group senior vice president of communications.
MLB’s current set of national media deals, signed in July 2006, end after next season. But several sources expect new deals to be finalized as soon as this summer. Currently, ESPN pays an average of $306 million per year for its package that includes “Sunday Night Baseball;” Fox pays an average of $257.1 million per year for its package led by the All-Star Game and World Series; and Turner pays an average of $148.6 million per year, with its rights fronted by the Division Series, half of the League Championship Series, and most recently the two new single-game elimination Wild Card playoff games.