“Will it happen in the next five years? No. Would it be in the next 15 years? Quite possibly yes. We shouldn’t assume that somehow being on traditional broadcast television means that everyone has access,” said Ed Desser, a former NBA executive who now runs his own consultancy, Desser Sports Media. “Because that is increasingly not the case. In 10 or 15 years, it will probably be even less the case.”
The World Series rights have been held exclusively by Fox Sports since 2000, a long-running partnership
that included an extension in 2018 that extended the Fox-MLB partnership to 2028. (MLB also has a national deal with Turner Sports that will expire in 2028. Last February, as reported by
The Athletic’s Evan Drellich and Andrew Marchand, ESPN opted out of the final three seasons of its $550 million contract that gave it the right to broadcast “Sunday Night Baseball,” the Home Run Derby and playoff games,
though Marchand reported last month that representatives from MLB and ESPN have renewed talks to keep the sports network involved in some form.)
Fox pays an average annual fee of $729 million for its current package of MLB games, which includes the All-Star Game, playoffs and the World Series. Top Fox executives have said publicly that MLB remains an important content tentpole and that the company
will access MLB inventoryin the event of an ESPN-MLB breakup.
As Drellich has written extensively, MLB is aiming to create national packages for major streaming companies to bid on come 2028.
The reality of the marketplace is that if the World Series was moved off free-to-air TV in the U.S. and moved exclusively onto a streaming platform, whether that is 2028 or a couple of years afterward, MLB would be sitting on a financial gold mine. The inaugural move of rights from linear to digital has historically resulted in a significant additional value beyond rights merely moving from one linear package to another linear package. Sports leagues have calculated that fans will get over any initial resistance and anger from the move.
“We’re not just talking about a pedestrian set of Tier 1 rights here — this is the culminating round of our national pastime and would represent the first time the ‘Finals’ of one of the Big 4 U.S. sports moves exclusively off (network or cable) television, which is much bigger deal than, say, a digital simulcast of the Super Bowl or the recent simulcast of the Stanley Cup by WBD,” said William Mao, the Senior VP of Octagon’s Global Media Rights Consulting division, who advises rightsholders, distribution platforms and technology companies within the sports broadcast space. “Take these imperfect reference points:
Consider the multiple in value the MLS saw from its Apple deal (moving from Fox and ESPN), the Netflix price tag for its NFL Christmas Day package (games that were previously considered part of broader CBS, Fox, and ESPN deals), or what Peacock and Amazon each paid for a single exclusive NFL Wild Card game.”
Mao continued: “In recent seasons, the audience for the World Series has accounted for 30 to 40 percent of the total consumption in Fox’s MLB package. The value of the current Fox deal was reported as $729 million per year, suggesting that World Series games alone could represent $218 to $292 million of the deal’s annual value. One could also argue this range is on the conservative side, given the World Series is the jewel in the crown levering up the overall value of the Fox package. The World Series could conceivably fetch an even higher price as a standalone tentpole set of rights.”
John Kosner, a former top ESPN digital executive who is now the president of Kosner Media
, a digital and media consultancy and an investor and advisor in sports tech startups, believes the World Series could be the carrot that brings in a Netflix or YouTube as a major MLB player. The idea would be that if MLB wants a partner that can serve as a tentpole for all of its inventory,
including local inventory, a streamer is a logical way to go. With revenue and reach as the twin goals of sports leagues, the circulation of the biggest streamers such as Netflix and Amazon will be broader than the broadcast networks when our scenario hits.
“Let’s presume that MLB
gets through their bargaining and is in a position where they can go to market in 2028 in a potentially new way,” Kosner said. “What strikes me as interesting is them wanting a widely-distributed, wealthy streaming partner to facilitate a new look, all-in-one streaming operation. The carrot could be that the entity would then carry the World Series. Because what you really want is to deliver much more value in the regular season than you’re able to at the moment. So, in order for the World Series to make sense on streaming, one of the key attributes of a partner would have to be a really strong promotional platform during the regular season to build awareness that’s where the World Series is.
“Also, keep in mind that baseball has significant global appeal between Ohtani (who is Japanese), its position in Korea, and the large number of Latin and South American baseball players. We are seeing the NFL’s experiment with YouTube with the Brazil game in September. That’s part of the appeal with a global streaming entity.”
