Major League Baseball (MLB) has inked a three-year media rights deal with Comcast’s NBC Universal and ESPN that will keep most of its nationally-televised, regular season games on traditional TV, the league announced on Wednesday.
The deal also allows streaming service Netflix to offer special events from MLB, including the T-Mobile Home Run Derby, the Field of Dreams game and the World Baseball Classic from Japan, along with one Opening Night exclusive game.
ESPN will become the national seller of MLB.TV, the league’s out-of-market streaming service, which will continue to be available as a standalone product while also bundling with ESPN Unlimited, Hulu and other Disney-owned streaming apps and services.
NBC Universal will take over rights to Sunday Night Baseball from ESPN, and the network will also offer Sunday lead-off games and the Wild Card Series. Those events will be available on NBC, the new NBC Sports Network and on Peacock.
ESPN will offer a nationally-televised game during the middle of the week, which will be available on its cable multiplex and ESPN Unlimited.
“Our new media rights agreements with ESPN, NBC Universal and Netflix provide us with a great opportunity to expand our reach to fans through three powerful destinations for live sports, entertainment, and marquee events,” Rob Manfredi, the Commissioner of MLB, said in a prepared statement on Wednesday.
Manfredi said the last World Series game delivered 51 million viewers around the world — it wasn’t clear where that number originated, but it was about double the audience of baseball fans who watched the game on Fox in the U.S. — and the new media deals announced Wednesday are intended to lean into that momentum by delivering more events and games across differentiated platforms.
“We’re looking forward to tapping into the unique areas of expertise that ESPN, NBC Universal and Netflix each bring to the sport for the benefit of our fans,” Manfredi said.
Fox Sports will continue to offer the World Series games, and share playoff rights with Warner Bros Discovery’s (WBD) TNT Sports under a separate media rights agreement.
