Apple Reaches Third Base in MLB Sunday Night Baseball Talks
Lesly Juarez
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Apple is in the final innings of its bid to host MLB Sunday Night Baseball, with only one other player remaining at bat, according to a new report from The Athletic.
Rumors began circulating in June that Apple was eyeballing the Sunday lineup following news that ESPN was ending its national TV deal at the end of the current season. By July, Apple had submitted an official bid, and now it’s apparently one of only two contenders left in the game, competing against NBC/Peacock for the rights to Sunday Night Baseball and first-round playoff games.
In June, Sports Business Journal believed that Apple was the frontrunner in the deal to grab the rights that were previously held by ESPN, which was bowing out of the game early because it felt the $550 million it was paying to broadcast 30 games per season was too much. However, ESPN reportedly stepped up to the plate last month with another bid that was believed to be competing against NBC and Apple.
However, it now appears that ESPN may have been primarily interested in weekday games, according to The Athletic, which reports that it may be able to add those and a “bigger daily digital presence,” while the Sunday Night Baseball package is likely to end up at either NBC or Apple. Meanwhile, Netflix is reportedly in the lineup to get Home Run Derby.
ESPN previously held this entire package, but since it cancelled its deal, the MLB has reportedly been trying to diversify its portfolio across multiple networks and streamers to make up the $570 million owed to MLB for the upcoming year. As The Athletic explains, that’s slightly higher than what it was getting from ESPN as “the value of these deals escalates over time.”
MLB didn’t exactly part ways with ESPN on the best of terms. After the breakup, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred castigated it as a “shrinking platform,” and suggested it wasn’t worth the league’s time. Of course, that’s also just the way negotiations go sometimes, and it seems that the two have at least partially reconciled.
The ESPN and Netflix arrangements appear to be done deals at this point, with only the Sunday Night Baseball and playoff game rights still up in the air between NBC/Peacock and Apple. The Athletic notes that it’s also possible that MLB could split those into separate packages, but so far they seem to be going as a single group of rights.
Several insiders believe that Apple is still in the preferred partner position for Sunday Night Baseball for the same reason it was able to craft its unique Friday Night Baseball deal: specifically, that the MLB wanted to get baseball games in front of as many eyeballs as possible and expand its reach into foreign markets. That’s something traditional broadcasters can’t provide, and even NBC, with its Peacock streaming service, remains a US-only option, which would exclude even audiences in Canada, which is home to the Toronto Blue Jays.
This has made MLB officials hesitant to go with NBC’s bid, according to several sources, as its reach pales in comparison to Apple’s, which already runs Friday Night Baseball in over 60 countries and regions, with no blackouts even during home games. Apple also offers a more complete experience for Apple fans that would undoubtedly extend to Sunday Night Baseball, including the MLB Big Inning whip-around show, Countdown to First Pitch, MLB Daily Recap, and MLB This Week, plus the tight integration into Apple News and other services like Apple Music and Apple’s Sports app.
Apple signed a seven-year deal for Friday Night Baseball for only $85 million per year, a relatively low price that was based on both the MLB’s desire for greater reach and the fact that it was an entirely new package. Sunday Night Baseball is a marquee package that’s been a crown jewel in the MLB’s broadcast offerings for over 35 years, so Apple will undoubtedly need to pay more for it. Still, with the company’s deep pockets, it’s unlikely that money is the object here.
The Sunday Night Baseball deal is expected to run for only three years, with the MLB aligning it with the remainder of the Friday Night Baseball contract and its other rights deals so that everything goes back up for bids in 2028. There’s a good chance that Apple will become the new interim caretaker of Sunday Night Baseball, but it could also put it in a better position to score an even larger package in 2028 and create something that would rival its MLS Season Pass.
