{"id":81453,"date":"2025-08-20T03:19:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T03:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/81453\/"},"modified":"2025-08-20T03:19:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T03:19:15","slug":"espn-deal-to-buy-mlb-tv-close-to-being-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/81453\/","title":{"rendered":"ESPN Deal to Buy MLB.TV “Close To Being Done”"},"content":{"rendered":"

With ESPN\u2019s current deal with the MLB coming to an end, there\u2019s been a lot of talk about which platforms will get rights to air and stream baseball next season. Accord to Yahoo Sports\u2019 Kendall Baker, rights deals are \u201cclose to being done.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a post on X Tuesday<\/a>, Baker shared information from a source about a list of MLB deals that are close to being finalized. That list includes the end of a relationship with Apple TV+, NBC and Peacock signing on for Friday and Sunday games and a Wild Card game, Netflix getting the Home Run Derby, and ESPN acquiring MLB.TV.<\/p>\n

Those deals are mostly in line with a report<\/a> from Andrew Marchand at\u00a0The Athletic last week. Marchand reported that NBC was interested in Sunday Night Baseball, verifying what we knew about NBC making an offer in May<\/a>. Marchand also said that Netflix was showing interest in the Home Run Derby. <\/p>\n

Back in April<\/a>, we shared notes from an interview with ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro by\u00a0Sports Business Journal, which included plans for ESPN to continue covering baseball on the new EPSN app, even after the deal between the network and the league ended.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have to be fiscally responsible and disciplined,\u201d Pitaro said in the interview. \u201cIt does not mean that we are not interested in remaining in business with Major League Baseball. I\u2019ve been consistent that we are still interested in national games. We\u2019re interested in other components of our package. We\u2019re interested in postseason, but we also are very, very interested in local, whether that\u2019s in market or out of market.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pitaro also stated that \u201ceverything is on the table,\u201d including MLB.TV. Now, four months later, we might see that deal come to life, just in time for the launch of the new ESPN app<\/a> this Thursday, August 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With ESPN\u2019s current deal with the MLB coming to an end, there\u2019s been a lot of talk about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,794,591,85],"class_list":["post-81453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-espn","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}