MLB plans new national TV packages for 2028; changes to revenue sharing, CBA crucial

The year to watch in baseball is 2028.

At a time when Major League Baseball is offering employee buyouts at its flagship television station, MLB Network, and the bankruptcy case of a major broadcasting partner, Diamond Sports Group, has just wrapped, the league’s long-term media rights plan is coming into focus.

MLB plans to create national packages for major streaming companies to bid on come 2028, the year that the league’s national television deals with ESPN, Fox and Turner are set to expire. The commissioner needs as many of its teams’ local media rights available as possible by then, and to that end, all six clubs returning to Diamond Sports Group are on deals that were designed around that goal. 

“Most important from my perspective is that all the deals for the Diamond clubs end no later than 2028,” commissioner Rob Manfred told The Athletic on Tuesday, the first of three days of owners’ meetings in New York. “My interest in local rights in large part is to have them available when we do national renewals.”

MLB already is handling the broadcasts for an additional group of seven teams in 2025, and will be partially responsible for an eighth team. As of today, close to two-thirds of the league’s 30 teams appear to have their rights available come 2028, if not more.

Interest in national packages should be heavy, both for fans and bidders. MLB’s goal is for any offering to be free of local blackouts. And for would-be broadcast partners, baseball’s 162-game season provides an unmatched volume of sports content. Executives from Apple, Amazon, CBS, Disney/ESPN, DirecTV, Fox, Netflix, NBC/Peacock, Roku, YouTube and Warner Bros.-Discovery were all on hand during the World Series.

Manfred wants to do what the NBA’s Adam Silver did: split the league’s inventory in different ways.

“I’d like to have all the rights available,” Manfred said. “I’d like to talk to the people who are buyers. I’d like to cut them up into packages and sell them, as many of them as possible, nationally, and then have a plan to deal with what’s left over.”

MLB and ESPN have a mutual opt-out of their national deal after this season. Conversations between the two are ongoing, said a person briefed on the talks who was not authorized to discuss them publicly. 

ESPN is expected to threaten to opt out. ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro has publicly stated he would like to be part of MLB’s local rights solution.

Bundling all the rights together will be another matter. Producing the changes the commissioner seeks would require some heavy lifting. Manfred wants the league office to take over teams’ local media rights — the traditional, linear TV rights, as well as the in-market, direct-to-consumer streaming rights, both of which currently belong to the individual clubs.

To achieve that, Manfred needs the owners to agree both on that transfer of control, and the way the teams would then share the local TV income, a difficult task because the worth of media rights varies greatly from small markets to large.

He will also need approval from the players’ union. The Players Association does not control how MLB uses its TV rights, but it does have a say in revenue sharing between teams. 

The current CBA between owners and players expires in December 2026. This ultimately means that 2026 and 2027 will be crucial years when baseball television and labor issues collide. 

“If the model changes, we will be involved in negotiating how those changes might affect the system and will ensure that the interests and priorities of the players are protected,” said Tony Clark, the head of the players’ union.

Uncertainty continues

For now, the sports television landscape remains in turmoil amidst cord-cutting. At least half of MLB’s 30 teams have taken a reduction in local media rights fees sometime in the last two years. And last week, MLB Network president Bill Morningstar sent an email to employees announcing buyouts.

“Unfortunately, the business side of our industry continues to be challenging, specifically the decline of our largest revenue stream, the traditional linear cable and satellite bundles,” Morningstar wrote in the email, which was reviewed by The Athletic. 

Morningstar wrote the network is “right-sizing.” Manfred declined to specify a targeted number of buyouts.

“MLB Network is like every other cable property,” Manfred said. “It needs to be more efficient.  … Long term, we think that the network remains really significant to our media strategy because it is a hub for producing content. 

“There’s a variety of different things that could happen. It may just produce content that becomes part of a 30-club digital offering. … To the extent that you want to keep a linear property alive — we haven’t decided exactly which one of these is going to happen — but you could imagine a world where people who stay in the bundle go to the MLB Network and they get (pre- and post-game) programming all day long, until the team in their market plays. 

“And at that point in time, you get the in-market game, and then you go back to (pre- and post-game) programming. And later in the evening, you get a kind of national, outside-the-market broadcast.”

Changing the plan

The revenue-sharing component of Manfred’s vision represents a sea change. The fundamental issue is that some teams’ media rights are worth much more than others. Why would the New York Yankees want to split an equal share of local TV money with the Tampa Bay Rays?

During the playoffs, Manfred said on Puck reporter John Ourand’s “The Varsity” podcast that “there is a path forward that involves media and other really significant industry issues that could put the clubs in — all the clubs — in a position to come together.” 

Manfred also told SiriusXM’s Mike Ferrin, Jim Duquette and Kevin Frandsen that “it’s important to recognize that our clubs should and do act in their economic self-interest.”

“If you want to make a change, you’ve got to demonstrate to people that what you’re offering to them is better for them, and that’s incumbent,” Manfred continued. “I do think there are a combination of things that for even the very biggest teams, we can demonstrate that for the good of the game over the long haul, it’s better for everybody and better for them.”

People briefed on Manfred’s plan who were not authorized to speak publicly said it’s a matter of a trade. If the teams are going to equally share all local TV money, then they will share less of the other streams they currently divvy up. 

Teams today divide up 48 percent of their net local revenue. That includes local media, ticket sales, concessions, merchandise and sponsorships.

How much money each team receives from that pot, if any, grows complicated. But an over-simplified way of looking at it would be for every dollar generated, a tax of 48 cents comes along with it.

Two huge questions will linger leading into negotiations with players: As part of the change in revenue sharing, will the owners pursue a salary cap, something the other major sports leagues have?

And either way, is another lockout in the offing?

A strong push for a cap would most certainly guarantee a protracted work stoppage, as it is something players have always fought against. And a work stoppage — even just an offseason lockout, as was seen in 2021-22 — is not going to help national-package bidding prices. It also would be a drain on the game at a time when rule changes such as the pitch clock and stars such as Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani have elevated the sport.  

Counting game

How is it that Manfred already has close to two-thirds of the league’s local rights available for 2028? Diamond has six teams, and could soon have a seventh. The Kansas City Royals are in continued negotiations with Diamond over a return.

The league is carrying seven teams, and an eighth, the Seattle Mariners are going to join that group too, although their arrangement appears unique compared to the rest.

“It’s just complicated because they have distribution agreements that ran longer,” Manfred said. “We’ll do the production for them, not clear how much more.”

Those two groups add up to as many as 15 clubs.

The Atlanta Braves, Detroit Tigers, Los Angeles Angels, Miami Marlins, St. Louis Cardinals and Tampa Bay Rays went back to Diamond with deals no longer than four seasons. A seventh team, the Kansas City Royals, is in continued negotiations with Diamond over a return.

(There is some variability in the length of contracts the six Diamonds teams agreed to. The Cardinals’ deal is for four years, through 2028, while the Angels’ deal runs through 2027, people briefed on the deals said.)

Then, the league will handle the broadcasts and distribution for at least seven clubs in 2025: the Arizona Diamondbacks, Cincinnati Reds, Cleveland Guardians, Colorado Rockies, Milwaukee Brewers, Minnesota Twins and San Diego Padres. An eighth team, the Seattle Mariners, are likely going to join that group too, although their arrangement might be unique compared to the rest.

“It’s just complicated because they have distribution agreements that ran longer,” Manfred said. “We’ll do the production for them, not clear how much more.”

Those two groups add up to as many as 15 clubs. 

Then, the Houston Astros and Pittsburgh Pirates were among four teams that Warner Bros.-Discovery backed away from in 2023. Other clubs, such as the Texas Rangers, who left Diamond after last season and are trying to launch their own network, are likely to have their rights available as well. The Chicago White Sox just started a network too.

Every additional team MLB adds to its MLB Media portfolio does not necessarily require the same level of new spending and hiring by the league.

“There are clearly economies of scale,” Manfred said. 

For teams whose local rights MLB does not presently have access to for 2028 — those that are locked up long-term with a broadcast partner — a lot of things can happen. Deals could be renegotiated. Or, depending on how things shake out, perhaps some teams live out their deals.

Diamond after the rough

MLB was Diamond Sports Group’s loudest critic during the bankruptcy process. Diamond, which operates the FanDuel Sports Network channels, filed for bankruptcy in the spring of 2023, and a federal judge last week approved its plan to reorganize the business. 

One of the disputes between MLB and Diamond was over the value of in-market streaming rights: whether Diamond could offer a standalone subscription to watch various teams. In 2024, seven of the 12 MLB teams with Diamond did not grant those rights.

That was a disappointment for fans, who clamored for additional means of accessing games. Now, all six teams returning to Diamond have granted those rights, and three, the Braves, Angels and Cardinals, are doing so for the first time. 

But most of the teams that were with Diamond at the start of the 2024 season have also taken pay cuts, be it with Diamond or elsewhere. Did MLB therefore do well to hold out on granting those streaming rights? Manfred believes the clubs would have come out worse, perhaps with greater reductions in rights fees or without the contract lengths the league sought, had it not taken that stance. 

“Yeah,” Manfred said. “I think the outcome… in terms of the things we were looking to achieve, were in some significant part (owed to) the strategy that we employed: saying we weren’t going to take cuts, and we’re not giving you rights for free.”

Of the 18 teams that were televised by either Diamond or Warner Bros.-Discovery at the start of the 2023 season, only three have avoided a pay reduction in the last two years. The Braves and Rays have not taken cuts, and although the Marlins’ deal was more complicated, their take is effectively the same, Manfred said.

Most teams’ exact cuts are not known. St. Louis’ 2025 fee is reduced by about 25 percent compared to what their prior deal with Diamond called for.

MLB and the union have modified the current CBA to allow additional money to go to teams who have seen their rights fees reduced. 

“Our rights are with FanDuel,” Cardinals president Bill DeWitt III said in an interview this month. “Where would we sit in a nationalized MLB streaming environment? That’s sort of at the next level up on my pay grade. But we’ve always been supportive of MLB’s efforts.

“We’re cheerleading them as hard as anybody so that MLB can develop perhaps a model that might be viable for all 30 at some point. We want to be, certainly, team players in the MLB ecosystem.”

— The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand contributed reporting to this story.

(Photo of Rob Manfred: Kim Klement Neitzel / USA Today)