Baseball has too many cheerleaders, including media people who thought the sport was a pastime and now realize it’s past tense. They should know that in 375 days, they will have nothing left to cover except divided owners and raging players. The collective bargaining agreement expires, with discussions about a no-chance salary cap more immense than the ocean between Los Angeles and Japan.
Why am I so sure? This week, Major League Baseball agreed to new rights deals with ESPN, NBCUniversal and Netflix. The value of those contracts: $800 million annually for the next three years. The applauders are thrilled, with The Athletic praising commissioner Rob Manfred for putting “on a rally cap” and helping his industry. What they won’t do, of course, is compare baseball to the NFL and NBA after the World Series drew a grandiose number — 38.2 million viewers in North America — that should have raised financial stakes.
Eight hundred MILLION a year?
The NBA agreed to $77 BILLION for 11 years, which annually delivers $7 BILLION to Adam Silver’s league.
The NFL wants to renegotiate media deals, which means $111 BILLION for 11 years — $10 BILLION a season — could turn into $20 BILLION annually.
Knowing the bluster of the baseball owners, old and dumbed down in many cases, peace will turn into indignation. This is a basic synopsis of how baseball lags like hogweed in the kingdom of sports. No longer are we watching a national affair from April to November, only wowing us when the Dodgers survived the Blue Jays in a classic Series — which could be replaced next October with 8.5 million observing the Brewers and Mariners. Manfred is making a big deal about Netflix, which is paying $50 million a year to broadcast an opening-night game, a Home Run Derby and a “Field of Dreams” game in Iowa. Fifty million wouldn’t pay Juan Soto or Shohei Ohtani for one season. Fifty million makes Roger Goodell laugh. Also, with scrawny ratings, wouldn’t Netflix dump baseball?
And ESPN? The chairman, Jimmy Pitaro, was rankled when Manfred said, “We do not think it’s beneficial for us to accept a smaller deal to remain on a shrinking platform.” That is precisely what ESPN has become, losing massive numbers of cord-cutters in full shrink. The two bosses made up, yet Pitaro will pay only $550 million a season when he pays $2.7 billion a year to the NFL and allowed the league to receive a 10 percent equity stake. NBC, which should reintroduce Bob Costas but won’t, is paying $200 million a a year for Sunday night airings on the traditional network and all four playoff wild-card games. Fox pays a $729 million average for the postseason and Series while Turner Sports pays $470 million, both through 2028.
No one cares about millionaires, not in sports.
Baseball is hoping those figures grow dramatically in 2029. Why would people even look that far when the owners are driven again by another labor impasse? The TV “millions” will prompt warfare when players refuse another salary-cap attempt. “Get the f— out of our clubhouse,” Bryce Harper said when Manfred entered the Philadelphia quarters in June. When the Dodgers won another championship by spending $500 million, with luxury taxes, why would any player want a cap when the richest teams win the goods? When Paul Skenes is stuck in Pittsburgh until post-2029, why would anyone want him to stay there longer? A cap makes Oklahoma City an NBA champion. An NFL cap created a mini-dynasty in Kansas City. Those are small markets. Do we want the low-level White Sox to receive salary breaks when we doubt if their owner would spend an extra penny — when pennies no longer exist?
The cap doesn’t fit the bottle. The TV numbers reflect what executives think of baseball and its wavering future. We all loved the Series. That doesn’t mean we liked the rest of last season or other seasons. When player agent Jim Murray sided with Manfred for four years, he was decertified by the players’ union. Already, Manfred has responded by downplaying his Murray association. Unwise.
“All I can tell you is that from the day I first set foot in Major League Baseball, every time there was a negotiation, there were conversations where agents reached out to owners, agents reached out to the commissioner’s office, the union reached out to owners. It has always happened,” Manfred said. “I did not regard those conversations to be different from any of the others that have taken place over the period of time that I’ve been involved.”
The union is miffed by his answer, releasing a statement to The Athletic: “Mr. Manfred’s comments suggesting there’s ‘nothing to see here’ both mischaracterize the facts and are extremely revealing of the league’s general approach to labor negotiations. There is nothing ‘business as usual’ about an agent acting as a ‘mole’ for the commissioner’s office, providing highly confidential information, circumventing the will of the players’ elected representatives, encouraging the league to reject union proposals and helping the league draft proposals and propaganda points. The agent community and players are justifiably outraged at MLB’s role in this activity and its attempts to circumvent the union.”
Manfred joined Bud Selig’s office as a full-timer in 1998. A wicked strike had canceled the 1994 Series and prompted fans to avoid ballparks. Another strike in 2027 would wreck the sport after it lifted us off the ground last month. This explains why the commissioner loves his new media deals.
Never mind the chump change.
“We think the combination of ESPN, NBCUniversal and Netflix is a great one for us,” Manfred said. “Expand our reach, we’re going to increase our partnership revenue. Given the opt out and everything, I think it’s really important that we managed to continue a relationship with ESPN. They’ve been kind of the bedrock of our broadcast program for a long time. Two great new partners in terms of NBC and Netflix, especially excited about Sunday nights on NBC.”
Meanwhile, team executives try to carry on with a bizarre offseason. Why have players been so quick to accept $22-million qualifying offers? They’re grabbing money when it’s available. “We’ll continue to plan with the system in place, because that’s the only certainty we’ve got,” said Mark Shapiro, president of the Blue Jays.
“It feels like it’s in the back of everybody’s minds,” Pirates general manager Ben Cherington said of a lockout/walkout. “Like that’s always been a thing we think about as you get towards the end of a CBA, what is this environment going to look like? Should we be considering that in decision-making? And the truth is, none of us know — really know. None of us really know what’s going to happen in 2027 or the next CBA. So we’re taking a pretty short-term focus in Pittsburgh.”
Someone else at The Athletic made this prediction: “I expect Netflix to make a big content marketing splash in MLB next season.”
If I ran the network, I’d set up cameras at 11:59 p.m. EST on Dec. 1, 2026.
The CBA expires then. Only that would be considered “Netflix and chill.”
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.