MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
ESPN and Major League Baseball drew a line in the sand, and both proceeded to cross it.
After MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred warned that baseball would walk away if ESPN opted out of its $550 million annual deal to air baseball, ESPN proceeded to do just that, opting out of its contract after the 2025 season two years earlier than expected.
Thus, after 36 years of broadcasting Major League Baseball, ESPN will no longer be about baseball. Not that it has been for the past how-many years, anyway.
Money, of course, was the central issue as ESPN wanted to pay less, while MLB wanted to see more for their something-something, as Manfred cited a lack of consistent MLB coverage at ESPN in a memo to teams announcing the pending split.
While the notion of agreeing with Manfred about anything is painful, he is right about lack of coverage on the so-called Worldwide Leader, as ESPN currently airs 30 games a season, including Opening Night, highlighted by 25 Sunday night games, the Home Run Derby and the MLB Wildcard playoff series.
Fox and TNT own the rest of the postseason until 2028 and air far more regular-season games not played on Sunday night, and Roku and Apple are regular-season streaming partners of MLB, which also owns the MLB Network, which is very good.
Major League Baseball is not the same as it was in 1990, the first season of its partnership with ESPN, but then neither is ESPN, which wholly embraced baseball during that time, airing regular-season games each week on Sunday nights and at least on three other nights a week.
All of it came together perfectly with “Baseball Tonight,” the daily hour-long show that featured so many of the best baseball writers such as Jayson Stark, Tim Kurkjian, Buster Olney and the Hall of Famer Peter Gammons.
When you heard the theme music for “Baseball Tonight,” you felt baseball in your heart and you understood that all things were good in the world. At least for an hour, that is.
The show was for many fans the easiest and most entertaining source of baseball information and highlights, and as ESPN treated its MLB coverage as top priority the network itself had become an essential part of any baseball fan’s life, highlighted by “Sunday Night Baseball,” from the studio show with Chris Berman through game coverage called by Hall of Famers Jon Miller and Joe Morgan.
There were Tuesday and Wednesday games, an occasional Monday game, and the weekly Friday night doubleheader, one usually called by the great Gary Thorne.
LIfe was good then. It hasn’t been for quite some time, as “Baseball Tonight” was canceled in 2017 and the Sunday Night game became unwatchable, though more people began to watch again last year when the network replaced most of its inept announcing team and cut so many of its stupid in-game gimmicks.
Duh. We’re here to watch the baseball game …
Overall, the perception became ESPN just didn’t like baseball anymore, because so very little of it could be, and still can’t be, found there anymore. It used to be that you could turn on one of ESPN’s channels during the summer and find something baseball-related, featuring faces and voices you liked and trusted, but that focus has changed to NFL and NBA coverage year-round.
Disney and ESPN likely answered what they may have perceived to be MLB’s bluff because of the financial imbalance of baseball and what it’s said to be doing to the sport’s popularity.
In the NFL, all of the teams eat from the same financial pie. In MLB, the wealthiest large-market teams take advantage of the enormous financial advantage they have of not having to share local broadcast revenues.
Meanwhile, Manfred told the owners that MLB has been in conversations with several interested parties for stepping in for ESPN in 2026 and that he expects to have “at least two potential options for consideration over the next few weeks.”
When the time comes, ESPN will have the Stanley Cup playoffs in the spring, the College World Series in June and the WNBA in mid-to-late summer to fill the Sunday Night Baseball hole on its schedule.
Neither will ever admit it, but ESPN is going to miss having baseball, and MLB, unless Manfred strikes gold, which is highly doubtful, is likely to miss ESPN – just a little bit anyway. Because that’s really the amount of baseball content ESPN has been providing for far too long now
Deal with somebody who wants baseball. ESPN clearly doesn’t.
Good riddance.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT