
Apple has emerged as a leading contender to clinch some live baseball games that are being vacated by the Walt Disney Company’s ESPN, according to a new report published this week.
The report, from the Sports Business Journal, comes about a week after a similar story in the Wall Street Journal that said Comcast’s NBC Sports was in the running for the Sunday evening games that are moving off ESPN at the end of the season.
The Sports Business Journal said Comcast and Apple’s interests are different, in that Apple is hoping to land the rights to more games than what Comcast is pursuing. Apple already streams Friday evening baseball games on Apple TV Plus, and the tech company is hoping to expand its schedule by including Sunday evening games and others played during the week.
Ultimately, Major League Baseball (MLB) may choose to split up its package of games once ESPN vacates the rights at the end of the season. Splitting the package would allow MLB to maximize its revenue potential by selling different games to different sports rights holders — which could include Apple and Comcast, among others.
Rob Manfred, the Commissioner of MLB, has previously expressed a desire to have more control over how live baseball games are distributed. Currently, rights are shared between national broadcasters and platforms like ESPN, Apple and Roku, as well as local TV broadcasters and regional sports outlets like YES Network and FanDuel Sports Network.
Manfred would like to see rights consolidated across a handful of national broadcast networks and platforms, in order to maximize the reach of the sport. He has also expressed a desire to make more live baseball games available over streaming services.