ESPN, MLB each have an opt-out in rights deal following 2025 season

[TMC]

MLB strikes new deals with NBC, ESPN and Netflix

Major League Baseball has signed new three-year media rights deals with ESPN, NBC, and Netflix, averaging nearly $800 million annually. These agreements will bring the Home Run Derby to Netflix, establish "Sunday Night Baseball" on NBC, and include a package of midweek games and out-of-market streaming rights for ESPN.

Deal breakdown:

• ESPN: Will continue to broadcast a package of midweek games and now has the rights to sell MLB.TV, which allows viewers to watch out-of-market games.
• NBC/Peacock: Will air "Sunday Night Baseball" and the entire Wild Card Series, with some games also streaming on NBC's service, Peacock.
• Netflix: Will broadcast the Home Run Derby, an exclusive Opening Night game, and an additional special event game each year, starting with the "MLB at Field of Dreams" game in 2026.

Other details:

• The deals are for the 2026 through 2028 seasons.
• The agreements were made after ESPN opted out of its previous deal, which was set to run through 2028.
• MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred expressed that the new partnerships would expand the league's reach to fans through various platforms.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by TMC

MLB strikes new deals with NBC, ESPN and Netflix

Major League Baseball has signed new three-year media rights deals with ESPN, NBC, and Netflix, averaging nearly $800 million annually. These agreements will bring the Home Run Derby to Netflix, establish "Sunday Night Baseball" on NBC, and include a package of midweek games and out-of-market streaming rights for ESPN.

Deal breakdown:

• ESPN: Will continue to broadcast a package of midweek games and now has the rights to sell MLB.TV, which allows viewers to watch out-of-market games.
• NBC/Peacock: Will air "Sunday Night Baseball" and the entire Wild Card Series, with some games also streaming on NBC's service, Peacock.
• Netflix: Will broadcast the Home Run Derby, an exclusive Opening Night game, and an additional special event game each year, starting with the "MLB at Field of Dreams" game in 2026.

Other details:

• The deals are for the 2026 through 2028 seasons.
• The agreements were made after ESPN opted out of its previous deal, which was set to run through 2028.
• MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred expressed that the new partnerships would expand the league's reach to fans through various platforms.

TOPICS:

• 0:00 IT'S NOW OFFICIAL WITH MLB
• 1:04 WHAT DOESN'T CHANGE
• 2:27 WHAT'S NEW: NBC
• 5:37 WHAT'S NEW: NETFLIX
• 7:29 WHAT'S NEW: ESPN
• 10:58 WHAT NETWORKS ARE PAYING MLB
• 12:48 TAKEAWAYS

ESPN planned to pay around $1.65 billion over the next three seasons for “Sunday Night Baseball,” the Home Run Derby and first-round playoff games. Now, NBC/Peacock has picked up “Sunday Night Baseball” and the first-round playoff games for nearly $200M a year, while Netflix took on the Home Run Derby, Opening Day and the “Field of Dreams” game for $50 million per season.

Those two deals add up to nearly $750 million in total over the next three years, which is $900 million less than what ESPN owed before the opt-out. Manfred’s move in the original negotiations is akin to reaching for a 3-0 pitch and fouling out instead of just taking first base and collecting $1.65B. And then, there was a little more.

• NBC’s MLB debut set to showcase Dodgers-Diamondbacks
  
• NBC announces additional MLB deal details, including Labor Day primetime game
  
• Who should NBC pick as its top MLB announcer?

[TMC]

Originally Posted by TMC

• NBC’s MLB debut set to showcase Dodgers-Diamondbacks
  
• NBC announces additional MLB deal details, including Labor Day primetime game
  
• Who should NBC pick as its top MLB announcer?

[TMC]

ESPN announces 2026 MLB schedule with 30-game package replacing ‘Sunday Night Baseball’

The network's new deal drops Sunday Night Baseball in favor of weeknight games and MLB.tv streaming rights.

[TMC]

Jason Benetti reportedly top candidate to be NBC MLB play-by-play voice

Fox Sports' Jason Benetti appears to be NBC's top choice to call MLB games.

By Matt Clapp on 01/05/2026

Fox Sports play-by-play announcer Jason Benetti is “the leading candidate to be the top MLB play-by-play voice on NBC,” according to Ryan Glasspiegel of Front Office Sports.

Benetti is one of the most versatile broadcasters in the industry, calling MLB, college football, college basketball, and occasionally NFL games for Fox Sports. Additionally, he’s the television play-by-play voice of the Detroit Tigers.

And Benetti has experience calling MLB games for NBC, as Glasspiegel notes. In 2021, he served as NBC’s play-by-play announcer for baseball at the Summer Olympics, and in 2022, he became the lead play-by-play announcer for MLB Sunday Leadoff games on Peacock.

Before joining Fox Sports, Benetti put his multi-sport broadcasting skills to use for ESPN from 2011-2022. And prior to becoming the TV voice of the Tigers in 2024, he was the TV voice of the Chicago White Sox from 2016 to 2023. He’s been a fan favorite in any role he’s had.

Glasspiegel notes that “[Benetti’s] contract is not up until later this year, and Fox would have to grant permission for him to take the NBC job, sources said.”

In March 2026, MLB returns to NBC for the first time since 2000 with a three-year media rights deal that includes 25 Sunday Night Baseball games per year, as well as the entire Wild Card round of postseason games, and exclusive Opening Day and Labor Day primetime games.

Benetti would be an excellent choice to be the top MLB play-by-play announcer for NBC, as Awful Announcing’s Sam Neumann explained in November.

[TMC]

NBC announces Jason Benetti will be Sunday Night Baseball’s play-by-play caller, but he won’t have a full-time analyst

Instead, NBC Sports announced Benetti “will be paired with analysts with connections to each participating team.” According to Sports Illustrated’s Jimmy Traina, NBC Sports’ decision may alienate viewers. “Fans want to build a connection with a broadcast crew, no matter the sport. Sports fans also like consistency,” says Traina. “I’m not a fan of playing ‘guess the announcer’ every week. If you miss the opening segment of Sunday Night Baseball this season, more often than not, you’re going to have no idea who the analysts are unless you recognize the voice of your local broadcaster. The flip side is that fans like to hear their local broadcasters. This is especially true in the postseason. National guys come in and just don’t know the team nearly as well as the analyst who has been there all year calling more than a hundred games.”

[TMC]

ESPN unveils MLB schedule with return to weeknight games

While ESPN’s schedule is certainly more fragmented than in previous years, the focus on summer makes sense for both MLB and ESPN.

[TMC]

Zac Brown Band will perform ‘Sunday Night Baseball’ open for NBC

The country group will record an opening number for the network's premier MLB package.

NBC will hire another ‘Sunday Leadoff’ play-by-play voice

"There is one more that we've got conversations with and have agreed to a plan with."

NBC reveals first ‘Sunday Night Baseball’ broadcast team

NBC's Sunday Night Baseball makes its debut March 29 as Jason Benetti calls Guardians-Mariners alongside Rick Manning and Ryan Rowland-Smith.

Orel Hershiser, Luis Gonzalez to call MLB Opening Day for NBC

Jason Benetti will do play-by-play for Dodgers-Diamondbacks.

• News: NBC MLB announcers, SEC Nation, PWHL and more
  
• Jason Benetti explains how he left Fox early to become NBC’s MLB play-by-play announcer
  
• Baseball’s great TV reset has arrive
  
• NBC will debut ‘Inside the Pitch’ feature starting with Clayton Kershaw, Adam Ottavino on Opening Day
  
• Al Leiter, Neil Walker reportedly slated to call NBC’s MLB Opening Day game

[TMC]

Originally Posted by TMC

NBC announces Jason Benetti will be Sunday Night Baseball’s play-by-play caller, but he won’t have a full-time analyst

Instead, NBC Sports announced Benetti “will be paired with analysts with connections to each participating team.” According to Sports Illustrated’s Jimmy Traina, NBC Sports’ decision may alienate viewers. “Fans want to build a connection with a broadcast crew, no matter the sport. Sports fans also like consistency,” says Traina. “I’m not a fan of playing ‘guess the announcer’ every week. If you miss the opening segment of Sunday Night Baseball this season, more often than not, you’re going to have no idea who the analysts are unless you recognize the voice of your local broadcaster. The flip side is that fans like to hear their local broadcasters. This is especially true in the postseason. National guys come in and just don’t know the team nearly as well as the analyst who has been there all year calling more than a hundred games.”

NBC’s rotating analyst format on ‘Sunday Night Baseball’ runs into first real problem

The issue seems to be more with the analysts used on Sunday, and less with the format itself.

By Sam Neumann on 04/13/2026
The idea behind NBC’s rotating analyst model for Sunday Night Baseball was sound enough on paper.

Jason Benetti — one of the best play-by-play voices in baseball, by most accounts — anchors every game, while former players with direct ties to the teams playing that week fill the analyst chairs beside him. Instead of a set analyst, NBC can parachute in team-specific knowledge, genuine personal history with the organizations, and insights that a permanent national analyst couldn’t replicate.

Three weeks into NBC’s first season of Sunday Night Baseball since returning to baseball after a 26-year absence, the dinner party — which Benetti compared to the format during his Peacock days — is running into a problem: not every guest is comfortable talking at the table.

Sunday’s Guardians-Braves broadcast put Corey Kluber and Andruw Jones in the booth alongside Benetti. The problem is that a Hall of Fame career and a functional broadcast career are related only in the most generous sense of the word. Kluber said as much himself ahead of Sunday’s game, telling the Akron Beacon Journal that broadcasting wasn’t a burning interest — it was more of a curiosity, something he was open to exploring. He was recommended for the opportunity by the Guardian’s PR department. He acknowledged he wouldn’t be flawless. That’s a refreshingly honest thing to say before your national television debut.

It is also, if you’re a viewer tuning into Sunday Night Baseball for the first time, not entirely reassuring.

Benetti is elite. He can carry a broadcast and has done it under far more difficult circumstances. But carrying a broadcast and elevating it are different things, and the rotating analyst format works only as well as the analysts it rotates in. When the model debuted on the season’s first Sunday Night Baseball — the Guardians visiting the Mariners in March — Rick Manning was in the booth for Cleveland. Manning has been calling Guardians games since 1990. He has been doing this for 36 years. The comfort level, the authority, the instinct for when to talk and when to let the game breathe, those are things you develop over decades, not days.

None of this is a knock on either man as a person or as a baseball mind. Jones knows the Braves and what it means to play center field at that level better than virtually anyone alive. Kluber understands pitching sequencing and preparation with the kind of granular specificity that the Inside the Pitch format — NBC’s real innovation this year — was built to showcase. Unfortunately for Kluber, CC Sabathia was tasked with that role on Sunday’s broadcast.

The question isn’t whether they know baseball. It’s whether knowing baseball and talking about baseball on live national TV are the same skill, and the uncomfortable answer is that they are not, and the gap between them tends to be widest on someone’s first time in front of a camera at this scale.

The format NBC chose was always going to produce this problem eventually, if the network opted not to use traditional analysts. When you commit to using different analysts every week, you’re committing to a range of broadcasting experience that spans from seasoned veterans like Manning — who could slot into any national booth and not miss a beat — to first-timers who are, by definition, learning the job in public. The team-specificity is real and valuable. But it comes with a cost that becomes apparent the moment someone brilliant at baseball sits in front of a microphone and discovers that that brilliance doesn’t automatically translate.

The solution isn’t necessarily to abandon the format. The local knowledge elevates the broadcast when the analyst has the tools to deliver it. What Sunday suggested is that NBC may need to be more selective about which local voices it puts in the booth versus which ones it directs toward the pregame show, where Sabathia was, incidentally, very good alongside Bob Costas. There is no shame in being a great analyst for a pregame segment, but it is a less natural fit for three hours of offering your thoughts on carefully selected nuggets. Take Dexter Fowler, for example.

Benetti is good enough to make the format work, even when it doesn’t. The experiment is still in its early stages, and the sample size is small. But Sunday was the first real test of what happens when the pedigree on paper doesn’t match the performance in the booth, and it might not be the last.