Why Baseball's Divorcing ESPN

And why ESPN might not mind, at the very least, a trial separation

It had been brewing a while. But one funny thing about celebrity breakups is how each party seeks to control the narrative. It’s always “mutually agreed” until it’s not. In the case of MLB and ESPN, after 35 years of sports-TV marriage, the assignation of blame has really kicked into gear after the fact.

MLB says ESPN never truly appreciated them. The network didn’t value the league enough to properly promote it outside of the broadcasts themselves, like the Sunday Night Baseball package. That’s why the league is flirting with younger partners now, meeting with the likes of Netflix and Amazon. They want someone who thinks they’re still worth romancing.

ESPN says MLB has been taking advantage of their history. In other words, they weren’t worth the money. Since those Sunday games are arguably the core of the ESPN package, when the network saw MLB cut an $85M/year deal with Apple to air Friday night games, and then a $10M/year deal with Roku to air Sunday afternoon games — all while ESPN is paying MLB $550M a year — they got a little upset about the disparity. Their case would be: well, if you value your product so much, then why do you only value it that highly when you’re dealing with us?

When ESPN came to them with the request to lower the fees, MLB told them the comparisons to the Apple and Roku deals are inapt, owing in part to ESPN’s rights to the wild-card playoff games and some other stuff like the Home Run Derby.

The latest salvo from commissioner Rob Manfred also included a spicy little jab at the state of the Worldwide Leader: “We do not think it’s beneficial for us to accept a smaller deal to remain on a shrinking platform.”

Ouch! Now, if you’re asking me, this is a case of shrinking-platform-on-shrinking-platform shrinking. You hate to see it. But I wonder whether this parting of ways might not be the best thing for these two.

MLB still has other rights deals. Fox Sports has committed to them in a way that ESPN hasn’t recently, ponying up $729M a year for a big slate of programming. They’re jazzed. Turner also pays them $470M a year, mostly for playoff rights, which do remain valuable in a world where, frankly, not that many national rights for baseball are.

The MLB has something of an opposite setup to the NBA. I think of the NBA, apart from a few especially passionate fanbases, as predominantly national, not even necessarily tied to a team. The league has player-driven fandom and punditry alike. On the other hand, I think of the MLB as predominantly local: people like me follow their team closely, the general goings-on of the league less closely than that, and that’s about it. Those are generalizations, but I think they more or less hold.

That makes it a harder sell for someone like ESPN. They pay $2.7 and $2.6B a year, respectively, for the NFL and NBA and talk about those sports constantly on all their talking head programming because they believe that’s what the people are looking for. And they’re probably right. Those two and college football are the biggest game in town. For them, ESPN will overpay. Sure.

You don’t see Pat McAfee and the like talking a ton of baseball because they know they don’t get as much pickup with that stuff. It’s increasingly relegated to hockey status, which is still a valuable entity of course, it’s just not as valuable as it once was. Much as it stings the baseball historians to ask, it’s not really a matter of whether baseball is the national pastime anymore. It hasn’t been for a while now. It’s whether it can still credibly compete as a national sport, and we don’t quite know the answer to that right now.

Anecdotally, I think I can safely declare the answer to that is no. I imagine I’m somewhere in the upper percentiles as far as baseball fans go, and I still don’t flip on a random Royals-Tigers game in the summer. I’m sure I’m not alone in saying so. I will always find the sound of a baseball game a comforting thing to have on in the background — especially now that Jim Edmonds is out of the Cardinals booth — but it is the background. Baseball’s hopes of recapturing the American imagination on a regular basis feels like a distant aspiration.

What that doesn’t mean, however, is that baseball is in any sort of existential danger. They’re not, as we’ve covered around here before. They remain a perfectly viable ‘inventory sport’ that continues to give people a nice way to spend an afternoon, and is so ever-present from a scheduling standpoint that they give themselves lots of opportunity to cash in on stadium entry.

Playoff baseball also provides, in my mind, the very height of tension. Until you have a stake in a baseball game in October, and you know what it feels like to hang on every pitch, you’re not gonna get it. But I hope that enough people do continue to care enough to get that. It’s a special thing, and I think it’s the most special part of the sport that the others can’t quite replicate.

So the MLB must be looking at basketball, as the handwringing over the NBA product continues long past a deal being struck, and wondering why they can’t entice a streaming platform to overpay for their sport with declining viewership. Hey! Why not us?

Good question.

⚾ For someone like me, who’d only be inclined to watch Cardinals games until it’s time for the playoffs, then I’ll have to go through… the FanDuel Sports Network, I guess? One friend of mine reported less than stellar returns on the early returns from spring training. I got permission to quote him, so don’t worry. He’s a lawyer, so that’s important to disclose. Do we think the HaHa! reaction in iMessage would hold up in court? Anyways, he said: “It’s like they’re recording from an iPhone.” Encouraging!

📺 Will this hubbub ultimately make it more annoying for the baseball fans that do remain to watch their team? I don’t know, probably. We did a Search Party video about the pitfalls of modern live sports fandom not so long ago, which you ought to check out here:

🏀 The Luka revenge game was a beautiful thing. Even short a center, the Lakers might be better than I’d expected.

🏈 Anyone else catch this announcement from the NFL? We’re getting a virtual measuring system, people! Problem solved, right? Wrong! Unless I misunderstand this line I read in the ESPN writeup: “The optimal tracking system notifies officiating instantly if a first down was gained after the ball is spotted by hand.” So we’re… keeping the dumb part. Cool, great. Glad we solved that one, guys.

👨‍✈️ And finally. I lost my dad this week, which is weird to type out, weirder to read back, and weirder still to have left until the end. But Bob was a pretty quiet guy who’d have hated top billing — his least favorite part of being a pilot was talking over the intercom, and yes, he did do the thing — so this felt like the right spot. He was not a sports fan, nor did he pretend to be one for my sake, but he always read these anyways, and that always meant a lot to me. So I hope he’ll find a way to get this one too. And thanks to everyone who’s reached out. That’s meant a lot too. Hug your loved ones, people!