Major League Baseball announced today that it has reached a new seven-year, multiplatform agreement with FOX Sports spanning the 2022-28 seasons. Eric Fisher of Sports Business Journal reports (via Twitter) that the contract’s rough value is a staggering $5.1 billion — a near-50 percent increase over the total value of the existing agreement between MLB and FOX. Bloomberg’s Scott Soshnick tweets a similar total figure and notes that on an annual basis, the agreement represents a 36 percent increase over the prior contract.
Soshnick’s colleague, Eben Novy-Williams also tweets that Major League Baseball owners approved a three-year, $300MM streaming rights deal with DAZN, wherein DAZN will offer a weeknight show whose coverage bounces from game to game throughout the league — “similar to NFL RedZone.”
Under the terms of the television agreement, FOX Sports and FOX Deportes will retain exclusive rights to airing the World Series, one of the two annual League Championship Series and two of the four annual Division Series and the All-Star Game. FOX will also continue to air a pair of games each Saturday, with today’s release indicating that the number of regular season and postseason games aired on FOX will begin to increase in 2022. FOX also secures expanded streaming, social media and highlight rights, per the announcement.
“FOX Sports has been our national television partner for over 20 years and I could not be more pleased to announce the extension of our relationship through the 2028 season,” said recently extended commissioner Rob Manfred in a statement announcing the new agreement. “We value FOX Sports’ commitment to baseball and are excited to continue our partnership with this new agreement. Their innovative presentation of Major League Baseball through game telecasts and special programming across all their platforms has helped strengthen and elevate our sports’ popularity.”
It’s an enormous windfall for the league and one that further places a spotlight on the ever-increasing revenue available to Major League teams in today’s game — even as league-wide attendance dips and World Series ratings reportedly fell off in significant fashion. While many fans focus on the increasing rate of pay for Major League players and gripe as $30MM annual salaries become more prevalent, team revenue streams are almost assuredly accelerating at a more pronounced rate. Of course, the financial specifics of each team (or of any team) remain unknown beyond a general sense, as such information is not made publicly available.
The reported increase in revenue comes against the backdrop of a free-agent freezeout from the 2017-18 offseason in which tensions between the league and the MLBPA reached heights not seen in the past two decades — since the most recent labor stoppage. As revenue increases on the team side of the equation, players and their representatives will no doubt seek to continually push the bounds of what are considered to be contractual norms and call for the players to receive their piece of the metaphorical pie — likely in vocal fashion at times, as was the case last winter.
But baseball is a dying sport!!!
If you can still make a buck weather it’s dying or not, then make that buck.
Buying the rights for 10 years down the line of something you think isn’t growing is actually a very bad way to make a buck
Can we just not bring back Joe Buck?
I support this comment 100%.
Yep
If you want to talk about annoying announcers, it’s too bad you couldn’t bring Phil “the Scooter” Rizzuto back from the dead. For those among the MLBTR gang who never had the pleasure, Scooter would mix in stories about his latest hospital/doctor visits with play by play of the Yankees.
Put Phil on FOX post season baseball instead of Joe Buck and you’ll be begging for Buck AND Tim McCarver to come back.
Yea but he was great on Paradise by the Dashboard Lights
And being the first “pitcher” for The Money Store. Good thing was he usually left after the seventh inning to beat the George Washington bridge traffic. How many of us who have a boss could do that?
1975/1976 worked in Hillside, same town Scooter lived in. We’d drive by his house many times yelling his name Scooter out the window. One Saturday morning doing the same routine yet this time he was in his driveway washing his car & waving at us.
We should have stopped.
They should have made that a requirement of the contract!!
Jim Brockmire is who they need.
I’m guessing this agreement keeps the black out policy in force. It’s a lose-lose for Fox and MLB.
If that’s the case, ratings will continue to deteriorate because consumers aren’t going to stop the cord cutting. Younger viewers, the ones that MLB desperately needs to reinvigorate a dying sport, refuse to pay $100/mo to Comcast and Time Warner when they’re only interested in 5% of the content in their package. Ultimately, Fox will regret forking out so much money for exclusive rights.
In turn, MLB’s popularity will continue to decline because fans are no longer as connected to a sport they don’t have the money or the time to watch. It doesn’t take long for a fan to lose interest. A year, maybe two and the home team is nothing more than a novelty competing with other summer time interests. As it is, fans attend games not for the game, but for the ambiance, and the ambiance is easy enough to duplicate close enough at other venues.
MLB has to know the impacts, but Fox waived a shiny nickel and MLB couldn’t resist.
This rights deal extension with FOX is for nationally-broadcast MLB games. It won’t have anything to do with the local blackout policy. The local blackout policy is rooted in the MLB’s reliance upon the various Regional Sports Networks across the country.
While FOX used to be the largest owner of RSNs, all of the Fox RSNs are included in the assets being sold to Disney. Granted, Disney has to sell them all off as part of their pre-negotiated merger approval deal with the DOJ, and there were rumors for a time that Fox might try to buy some of them back at a discount in that forced sale, but it doesn’t look likely now as Fox is not one of the opening round bidders.
Since Fox will be completely out of the RSN business, it would actually make more sense for Fox to try and force MLB out of its reliance on RSNs and the corresponding local blackout rules.
The archaic RSN infrastructure is going to be a tough nut to crack because so many of the teams have ownership stakes in and guaranteed cash flows stemming from their RSN. But it has to happen eventually. The current RSN model (and its ever-increasing prices… which all flow through to every single pay TV consumer) is not sustainable.
And teams will still cry broke even after their cut
And fans will still blame the players for being too greedy
It’s like death and taxes
$24M annually per club
lol
so about $150,000 per game?
That’ll cover drinks and snacks after the game …there’s no profit in that!
The League has to take some cut.
Get rid of Joe Buck
+1
I can’t think of too many people as universally disliked as Joe Buck.
He’s earned it.
I don’t mind him…
Your team probably hasn’t made it to a postseason game or you choose to not watch your team in the postseason him calling it.
Donald Trump
Some people are delusional enough to defend Trump
Joe Buck,not so much
If only Trump were universally disliked…!
Trump is probably disliked by a larger number of people than Buck due to more exposure, but he does have people that inexplicably love him. Buck has fewer people that dislike him, but a far greater percentage. Which is better? Interesting thought experiment.
What’s annoying are the idiots injecting politics into sports. Shut the heck up already!
Joe Buck only ruins our baseball viewing experience…
Everything’s political in 2018.
There are worse. Like those turds on TBS.
Yes hard as it is to imagine, we could do even worse than Buck. Just not much.
During the playoffs Buck talked almost nonstop about any team not the Dodgers. When the Dodgers were at bat, he talked about the Brewers or the Red Sox pitchers. When those teams were at bat, he talked about the batters. This went on inning after inning after inning. Lots of people noticed. He iced the cake by lashing out at the fans who called him on it. Class act, that Joe Buck.
Boom
Funny that you say that because I’m a Brewers fan and me and my friends thought Buck always talked about the Dodgers. It’s probably just perspective.
It was definitely worse during the World Series. Buck had a storyline. It was all about Boston, and he stuck to it, relentlessly. Innings went by with no Dodger player even being mentioned more than in passing. Got to where watching with the sound muted was the only option.
Can you source those statements? And when you say “far greater percentage”, can you be a bit more precise? +/- 10% would be fine.
Have you ever watched Sunday night football? I would rather listen to Joe Buck than Cris Collingsworth….
After some thought, I would have to agree with that assessment
Tim McCarver AND Joe Buck are only worse than Joe Buck LOL
Agreed – politics has no place here as I go to baseball to escape politics. That is why I cannot stand ANY political statement in any sport.
All about freedom of speech, just separate it from the sport.
Hawk Harrelson. Do White Sox fans even like this guy?
Seems this deal guarantees ten more years of suffering with Buck at the mic for the postseason. He thinks he’s wonderful, though. Probably that’s why he never gets any better.
Amen, get rid of Joe Buck
Wouldn’t be surprised if Joe Davis takes over the lead by the end of this deal.
Let’s not forget Joe Morgan… very informative while rarely taking a breath
Can’t we get somebody not named Joe?
Bob Uecker
I was in the minority – I liked Jon Miller and Joe Morgan. Not sure I would want them back, but they never bothered me.
Joe Buck and Tim McCarver? I used to sync up the XM radio feed to the TV. Took some time, but was worth it not to hear them.
Well, we can’t all be Harry Kalas…but I completely agree with you…Jon Miller and Joe Morgan were like comfortable slippers compared to the crowded booths full of self-important wingtips earnestly trying to explain baseball to us these days. Miller and Morgan never insulted viewers and brought a lot of humor and conversational enjoyment to the average game… who cares if Joe sometimes defied modern analytics? I like analytics as much as the next guy, but I mostly like to listen to people who genuinely enjoy the game between the lines…I’ll read up on the rest of it later. I especially miss Jon Miller…the Orioles were dopes when they fired him, and ESPN was nuts to let him go. The fans by the bay are darn lucky to have him as their radio voice and I definitely miss him on Sunday nights.
So much for the ‘baseball is dying’ narrative….
Aaahhh capitalism!!!! Alive and well!!!
Get rid of Joe Buck
I wonder what the ramificstions of this deal will be on the players side. There is already tensions sbout teams not spending, and after last year’s 50 million windfall not being seen to increase payroll, I worry without increased pay distrabution from teams to plsyers, we could be looking at another up coming strike.
It means more money to lose if there’s a strike, so this just makes both sides more willing to compromise if they’re rational
How to fix? Two words…..salary cap. But the players won’t ever go for it because they think it’ll hurt. Actually it’ll help most of the mid range players.
Or salary floor… Not spending enough on major league talent while pocketing revenue sharing payouts isa much bigger labor issue than the teams willing to spend big
I see your point, but I would also propose a salary floor. So every team must spend over X amount. With this deal every team can afford a minimum team salary if 100 mill (my assumption). It would help increase competition which in turn will help ratings.
No guarantee on increased competition …if bottom-dwellers take on dead money to meet the minimum.
Capping the teams willing to get better only effects competition in the sense that it forces mediocrity.
It’s not elevating the bad teams, it’s dragging everyone down to a lower level.
There is already a salary floor. In 2018 it was $13,625,000.00
…..and the Rays, the Pirates, and the Marlins couldn’t quite get there.
Yeah, I would love to see MLB have a salary cap like the NBA has – I’m really tired of seeing the same two teams in the World Series, like, four years in a row. A salary cap will definitely fix that.
Been saying this for years.
If there’s a strike at least we don’t have to listen to Joe Buck which they should get rid off
Like WW3 or the Big quake in LA, MLB is WAY overdue for a strike.
good let them strike. They are all spoiled brats.
Two reasons World Series ratings were down: late start times and Joe Buck.
They’re so many reasons for the lower ratings.
I agree, I turned it off at 11:30 a couple times, decent game but got tired of listening to Joe Buck. Did I mention that they need to get rid off Joe Buck?
My dad falls asleep to Joe Buck every time he calls a game. Sounds like you guys share a lot in common.
And because it was Dodgers/Red Sox?
The last few World Series have been AWESOME. This last one was no contest.
To be fair. Anybody the Red Sox played would have been a no contest.
Yes, but when games are ending after 3AM Eastern, who’s going to know? The past two years, if there had been day games, or at least games starting at 5PM Eastern or so, you could have made fans for life. But how many kids get to stay up to see the end of a game that starts at 8:30PM Eastern? I realize there is a West Coast too, but it is a lot better to watch a game earlier rather than later.
Rob Manfred wants faster games so here’s another dumb one I bet he’d like.
Start each inning with a runner on second base starting in the 4th inning. To make the game even faster START the game in the 4th inning! No more 9 inning games. Most quality pitching starts are 5 innings anyway.
If ratings still keep dropping, they can always bring back the rule where intentionally throwing at and hitting the runner counts as an out.
You’re correct that there were two reasons. But the reasons were
1 the Dodgers
2 the Red Sox
New teams create interest. Most fans are fans of their local team and it takes something especially compelling to get them to watch other teams. Another championship run by the Red Sox just doesn’t do it. Another look at an unappealing Dodger team doesn’t do it either. The Red Sox can’t deliver the east coast because the east coast fans are sick of them. The west coast fans…Who knows what anyone on the west coast is thinking?
more of joe buck? buck out!
Fox Sports over ESPN all day, everyday. I’m happy
Would be nice if it was carried by one of the big three CBS, ABC, or NBC. ESPN has the Sunday Night games, dude.
Rotate between all 3 and Fox same with All-Star Game and do Multicast like ESPN does for CFB National Championship so like this year you could also hear O’Brien and Sax or Steiner and Orel H. Allow like NESN to show it if Red Sox are in Postseason.
Agreed, as much as I dislike Joe Buck, I’ll take Fox over ESPN any day
You don’t like Matty V?
No. Way. Disliked him big time in his San Diego days too
Give me ESPN on mute so I don’t have to put up with all the extra on screen garbage…
But even then ESPN focuses on showing the analysts on screen far more. They are constantly doing split screens with some pointless interview or showing the analysts arguing some irrelevant point while ignoring the game. For some reason they believe you have to see someone in order to understand the words coming out of their mouth. ESPN is of the mind that people are actually tuning in to see their “personalities” instead of seeing the game.
Far better than TBS and a little better than MLB Network too simply because they focus too much on only a couple of teams. Fox Sports is not perfect, but of the four it is by far the best simply for the complete regional coverage.
There aren’t really any national broadcasters I look forward to hearing. My local people are schticky homers but at least I *agree* with their endless prattling that annoys the hell out of me.
Thanks I hate it
I think they need to get rid of Joe Buck and start those left coast games earlier. They’re just to long and to late.How many times can you here Joe Buck day “ we’re going to have a pitching change “ When then pitchers already in the dugout and the new guy is coming in. No kidding Joe Buck…. The guy coming in from the bullpen is going to pitch? Thanks for that Joe! Fire Joe Buck!
Teams’ books should be open for public viewing
I will take Joe Buck over John Smoltz. Get rid of Smoltzey
Smoltz will take any conversation topic and make it about him…every sentence
Whenever you put a pitcher in the booth, he will talk about almost nothing but pitching. It’s a rule. We have the same issue with Orel in LA.
How about reporting on expenditures like maintaining players, coaches, teams, and stadiums in the farm systems, scouts in other countries, worker’s comp, payments to players who don’t perform or are cut, and investors with $100s of millions who are looking for 15% or more return on their money?
Do I think Pablo Sandoval should give back $22M this year? Is it a real expense? Yes… There are way more…
Hmmmm…..wonder how much my renewal will be for mlb .tv?
Tmobile gives it (MLB.TV) free to it’s customers every year…wonder if that’ll continue?
WOOHOO! Once Ocasio-Sanders or whatever her name is brings us all the socialismz, then fans will get this money too!
Bruh, Like what you did there with combining that airhead with Bernie.
The rest of the world loves their own public funded healthcare systems and not going bankrupt going to the hospital which is the number one cause in the US but SOCIALISM is the bad thing.
Privatized firemen and police would be a joke in any part of the world. Don’t know why the US uses the big SOCIALISM bug to prevent it from joining the rest of the world in healthcare.
Because simply nationalized healthcare will take away our choices and put it into the hands of the Govt where greedy politicians of both parties will take advantage.
Yeah you got a poll or some actual evidence on this otherwise i look at the socialized Medicare and laugh at your thoughts. What is Medicare polling at 80%? How about Social Security? 70% what no way these socialized programs could be so beloved?
stfu, and stick to Canada!
LMAO! POST OF THE DAY!
ey has rent control, living in grandmas shed
Because socialized medicine sucks. Ask anyone whose ACTUALLY seen and experienced Canadian and US healthcare. There are people out there with a real life perspective of both systems via relatives and friends who don’t simply see it from a political perspective.
The TRUTH. Canada’s system flat out stinks. Sure everyone’s covered but you still pay for it with outlandish expensive taxes up there and the care is a couple notches below US healthcare because our hospitals are for profit entities who value SERVICE and QUALITY OF CARE. Canada’s healthcare is like going to the DMV. Most everyone there hates their job and is not motivated to do better because it’s a government run monopoly..
On top of that people wait YEARS to have basic surgeries because the system routinely runs out of money yearly because only so much is allocated to the provincial governments for knee replacements, cataract surgeries, etc. Non life threatening surgeries often take 6 months + to consult and then schedule with the next 6 months + waiting. And if you happen to fall towards the end of the year you often get bumped to the next year. Many cancer patients die up there because they get bumped so often.
The cleanliness of Canadian hospitals is also another horrendous problem. People have died by the thousands in Ontario alone due to C-DIP because the hospitals are so damn dirty.
My anecdotal evidence is completely different from yours. I have family in England and Switzerland who have lived in both Europe and the US and think the way we handle healthcare in the US is crazy. My wife’s grandparents are from England, but lived in the US for almost 20 years to be closer to their grandchildren. As they got older, they moved back to the UK only because of the healthcare systems in both countries. I also saw my own mother fight with doctors and her insurance company for almost two years to first diagnose her, and then to treat her, for stage 4 lymphoma when she was in her mid 40’s. The financial burden it took on her was very significant and my mother still hasn’t recovered from it 20 years later. I then saw my wife’s aunt go to the hospital in England with back pain and in less than a month was diagnosed and started on chemo for lymphoma. She was in her 70’s and didn’t pay anything out of pocket.
Honestly reading this stuff is hilarious, paying for medical bills like being shot and going bankrupt being treated for it in a hospital is uniquely American.
Anyone disagreeing with me should find a poll where an actual majority of the population is anti-single payer healthcare. Otherwise you pro free market healthcare folks need to bite the bullet and admit you have no solution to solve American healthcare.
How to become an expert on healthcare in two easy steps
1) Turn on your electronic device
2) Go to MLBTR and read the comments on an article about the MLB-Fox TV deal
Humorous, isn’t it, how we Americans love our medical system so much that we’re willing to let it bankrupt us if necessary. There’s a reason the rest of the industrialized world generally has a single-payer system: because a pool of all the people is the best risk pool. No segmenting of risks between well and unwell (read: “lucky” and “unlucky”), no full-time workers getting great health care and other full time employees at another company working equally hard getting crap coverage (or nothing at all). There’s a reason Medicare works and works well with low administrative costs (and would be lower if we funded more aggressive anti-fraud efforts against corrupt doctors and organizations like the one Rick Scott ran). No, as long as Americans believe the tripe that health care should be tied to employers and the corporate job lock that comes along with it, and the $30-$40 million a year insurance company CEO salaries, they get the health care they deserve…which according to every assessment puts us squarely in the “mediocre outcomes” category.
How is this related to baseball? Enough with the friggin’ politics. I come here to escape that bollucks.
But, um, people die here regularly because they can’t afford healthcare. Tens of thousands of people a year.
JJB Normally I don’t like politics mixed with sports, but I admit this one made me laugh.
Not a fan of Buck or a hater. Just don’t get the irrational hate for him. Style? Attitude? Help me here.
He’s boring, pretentious,about 15 years behind modern baseball, and can never seem to remember we wanna watch baseball and not him.
His voice.
Boring and biased.
Buck’s desperate attempts to make every moment sound like the most amazing feat in baseball history, and Tom Verducci’s worthless babbling pseudo-insight filling the rare moments where Buck stops talking long enough to for his diaphragm to contract and refill his hot air reserves… Fox broadcasts wear me down.
geejohnny – He is way too boring for me. BUT without McCarver, I can tolerate him more. When he and McCarver were on, we had McCarver giving outdated or wrong information (i.e. his definition of a balk); and Buck entertaining his stories.
Now, he just lulls me to sleep unless it is a good game. At least when someone like an Al Michaels did games (speaking when he did the 1980s and 1990s World Series), he had some excitement and acted like he was enjoying being there. How many times will Buck say he is retiring baseball or is done with it? Three times already, I believe (2009, 2016, and I think somewhere in the early 2000s).
This is wonderful news for the Wilpons. They’ll have more money not to spend.
A bit surprised they announced this now. It’s going to be tough to “freeze’ out Free Agents this year.
Also will increase the “Central Fund” payments to each team to close to (maybe over) 100 million. That’s money EVERY team gets, just for having the franchise. And before you Rays and Reds fans start salivating, remember the Red Sox and Cubs get it too.
Also, the significant portion is the multi-platform. Ya ratings are down; the fans MLB are targeting don’t watch TV. (I have 3 adult kids, all doing well; none even owns a TV). It’s all about streaming and all that other stuff.
Do your adult kids even watch MLB?
Good point. And the answer is, save for the playoffs, probably not. Even then, they stream and yahoo and those other things I barely understand, allowing that my Kindle is still sitting in my top dresser drawer.
Like I said, good point. They ARE rabid NFL fans (actually, the daughter’s the biggest one), but again, stream it.
While many fans focus on the increasing rate of pay for Major League players and gripe as $30MM annual salaries become more prevalent
———-
Meh, Envy’s been around for a while. I doubt it’s becoming more prevalent. It’s just what it is: losers envy winners. That’s why they stay losers.
Young people who admire winners learn from them, and become winners, instead.
it will be broadcast by diznee anyway. they have the cash.
Now only if mlb will allow local broadcasts of playoffs games in a regional market where the team plays.
That cannot happen, because you don’t know where the playoffs will be played ahead of time. So you can’t sell them locally (at least not at these kinds of prices).
What could happen is for Fox to have three broadcasts of each game, whenever possible: one for a national audience, and two others for the two local audiences. It would require a quick deal to be made (in the days between playoff series), with the two local broadcast teams, but, unlike trying to sell off broadcast rights that fast, this could be doable.
the playoffs are a different monster with fox, tbs, mlb network and espn broadcasting games. A local channel will broadcast local nfl games from a national broadcast, under the assumption the game sells out (72 hours in advance) or is played out of town, on the team’s local tv market. it can happen in the mlb.
why send the average mlb fan to a bar for a playoff game that may go late and they would have to work the next day.
The local stations would just know that if their team is in, they’re going to be on the air. If not, they won’t. They don’t need any more advance notice than the guy who orders the hot dogs at the ballpark needs.
I wonder how much the sale of fox sports to disney affected this deal. It’ll likely be harder for disney to divest fox sports with such a big obligation. Maybe Murdock over paid mlb to bring down the buy back price of fox sports?
Fox Sports was not included in the deal. You are confusing FS with RSN’s. (Regional Sports Networks)
Ah thanks for the clarification!
Let the home team commentators call the games. at least that way you only annoy half your audience.
would like to see them figure out a way to get more money to the younger players instead of overpaying the oldz….though i won’t hold my breath.
That is easy. Instead of 6 years of service time to free agency. Make it 4 or 5 calendar years from their first appearance on the 40 man roster.
Done. Fixed. Now to get the owners to agree.
Each team’s annual share of the Fox Sports national TV revenue will increase from $15.9 million to $24.2 million. A pretty nice increase for each team. That does not include the national TV revenue from ESPN, the TBS/TNT/etc… networks, or what they make from the MLB Network.
TNT doesn’t show MLB games.
$5.1b. That’s calculated based on Joe Buck’s $0.50/syllable rate.
Is Fox ever going to upgrade from 720p?
This is a shocking amount for baseball. As the boomers die off the viewership will plummet. I guess Fox is hoping the boomers last another 10 years.
From the article, seems there is over 828.5 million, I’m guessing at 30 teams is about 27.6 million extra for each team? Also lower market teams got millions from luxury tax. That’s not including Cable/TV deals Teams sign. Seems like Owning a Baseball team seems profitable. Does anyone see the potential increase hike in tickets? Must be hard to take a family to see a game. I curious yo hear what people in Chat forum spend on a game. I know I have spent about $100 for tx,food,parking.