Money Well Spent on “America’s Favorite Pastime”
As reported hereby mlb.com, ESPN and Major League Baseball (MLB) have entered into an eight-year, $5.6 billion agreement, which includes TV and radiorights to MLB programming both in the U.S. and internationally, keeps baseballon the network through 2021 and includes a record-setting increase in annualrights fees (doubled to $700 million from $360 million annually).
The agreement significantly expands the network’s studio and game content, allowing ESPN to broadcastup to 90 regular-season MLB games plus wild card games for both leagues and the ever-exciting All Star week events (not including sunflower seed spitting). Further, ESPN was granted the right to airthe annual opening night game, games played on national holidays, and it mayair up to ten Spring Training games per year. Games can also be streamed through ESPN.com and an ESPN app.
And there was much rejoicing.
ESPN’s president said, “Baseball remains thenational pastime,” but the truth is, baseball has long been eclipsed by other sports and then by video games based on other sports and then by video games about killing people, and then by video games about killing zombies. Meanwhile, there was recently talk of MLB becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of Justin Bieber, Inc. Commissioner Bud Selig commented that “today is a very historic day for baseball.” Taken in the context of a sport that is so hung up on statistics that every day is considered “historic” (Wow, Lou, that’s the first time that a rookie switch-hitter has struck out looking from both sides of the plate in the same inning — what a historic day!), Selig’s comments seems to be downplaying the deal.
Accordingto the New York Times, ESPN’s rival networks, Fox, TBS, NBC and CBS, are stillcontenders in the baseball airing arena, as ESPN did not manage to grab thedivision series or league championship series games. There’s still some history out there to be made.
[JT and Christina Phillips]