ESPN to drop MLB coverage, citing fiscal priorities

ESPN will not renew its Major League Baseball broadcast rights deal beyond the 2025 season, as the network prioritizes its streaming future.

The decision, widely anticipated, was confirmed Thursday, with both ESPN and MLB signaling the end of their long-standing partnership on national broadcasts.

ESPN has held rights since the 1980s, using the league’s regular season and playoff games to bolster its cable presence. However, in recent years, ESPN has reduced its baseball programming, including scaling back its studio show, “Baseball Tonight.”

ESPN’s exit from MLB comes as it launches a stand-alone direct-to-consumer streaming service later this year.

The network has been reassessing its sports rights portfolio in light of broader cost-cutting efforts at Disney. Last summer, ESPN extended its NBA rights deal for 11 years, while making decisions to restructure or drop other contracts.

“We are grateful for our longstanding relationship with Major League Baseball and proud of how ESPN’s coverage super-serves fans,” the company said in a statement. “In making this decision, we applied the same discipline and fiscal responsibility that has built ESPN’s industry-leading live events portfolio as we continue to grow our audience across linear, digital and social platforms.”

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, in a memo to team owners, described the split as a necessary step for the league to maximize its media rights value.

“We do not think it’s beneficial for us to accept a smaller deal to remain on a shrinking platform,” Manfred wrote.

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“In order to best position MLB to optimize our rights going into our next deal cycle, we believe it is not prudent to devalue our rights with an existing partner but rather to have our marquee regular season games, Home Run Derby and Wild Card playoff round on a new broadcast and/or streaming platform.”

Manfred indicated that MLB is in discussions with multiple broadcasters, though he did not specify which ones. The league has been actively exploring new distribution strategies in response to shifts in the sports media landscape, including taking over local broadcasts from regional sports networks that have shut down or restructured.

ESPN’s MLB coverage has been a fixture of the sport’s national presence for decades, particularly with its exclusive “Sunday Night Baseball” broadcasts. While the network will continue airing games through the 2025 season, losing ESPN as a national broadcaster could reshape how MLB games reach fans.

The move also reflects broader changes in sports media as leagues and networks adjust to declining cable subscriptions and increasing demand for streaming options.