ESPN coverage is wandering in the main league to the bottom of the ninth.
Walt Disney Sports Broadcasting Giant and MLB announced Thursday evening separately from the end of their long societies after the season that starts next month. The network and the league were in discussions to restructure the TV rights deal, but those talks collapsed this week.
ESPN asked MLB to accept fewer licensing fees because the broadcaster loses money on the $ 550 million deal per year. After the collapse of the talks, ESPN raised the condition that the subscription to end the contract, which was scheduled to be expired in 2028.
The network said that it will broadcast the 2025 season as planned, and then ends its operation after 36 seasons of Sunday night matches. Espn derby home run in July and the first round of the qualifiers in October include.
MLB criticized ESPN to reduce licensing fees.
“Given that MLB provides strong scenes, valuable population staff, and the exclusive right to cover unique events such as derby home run, the ESPN request to reduce rights fees is simply unacceptable,” the league said in a statement.
This shift comes at a time when networks absorb high costs of major sports rights at a time when cable channels such as ESPN are lost. The cutting of wires has a significant decrease in the distribution fees that drive the Disney -made cable operators and satellite operators to carry their channels.
The costs of Disney Sports rights swelled, especially after the network agreed to the coughing of other billions every year to maintain the American Professional League, including the championship finals and NFL.
Burbank Entertainment is also preparing to launch an independent ESPN broadcast service later this year.
ESPN said she wanted to find ways to play some regional baseball games.
ESPN said: “We are still open to exploring new ways to serve the MLB fans on our platforms after 2025.”
The broadcast of “Sunday Night Bibs” has been a player in the network’s schedule since before Disney, owned by ESPN. Last week, ESPN announced broadcasting teams for the 2025 season.
The coverage begins on March 27 with the game New York Yankees and Milwaukee Brewers, followed by the world evading Detroit Tigerers.
“We are grateful for our long -term relationship with the Greater League Bustub and we are proud of how ESPN coverage from the fans of super services,” Espn said in a statement. “When this decision is taken, we applied the same discipline and financial responsibility that was built the porridge of live events in the industry in Espn, where we continue to develop our fans through written, digital and social platforms.”
Al -Douri said that the agreement to end the contract early was a mutual decision.
“We had a long and useful partnership with ESPN returning to the first MLB game in 1990,” the league said. “Unfortunately in recent years, we have seen the ESPN scale reinforcing the baseball and investing them in a way that does not agree with the attractiveness of sports or its performance on its platform.”
