Even in the age of streaming and cord-cutting, live sports still carry a big price tag for broadcasters.
On Thursday, Major League Baseball and Fox Sports announced they had extended their national television rights agreement. The terms were not disclosed, but two people with direct knowledge of the deal said it was for seven years, through the 2028 season, and $5.1 billion.
That is a significant increase over the current deal with Fox, which expires after the 2021 season and was for eight years and $4.2 billion, according to the Sports Business Journal. Bloomberg was the first to report the value of the new deal.
Fox has been a national M.L.B. television rights holder since 1996 and became an exclusive national broadcaster four years later. Each year, Fox airs Saturday regular season games, the All-Star Game, and several playoff series, including the World Series. The company also broadcasts games in Spanish on Fox Deportes.
The new deal calls for Fox to expand its digital baseball programming and to increase the number of regular season and postseason games broadcast starting in 2022.
The average viewership for this year’s World Series, which the Boston Red Sox won in five games over the Los Angeles Dodgers, dropped by 23 percent from the 2017 World Series between the Dodgers and the Houston Astros, which lasted seven games.
M.L.B. also has media rights deals with Facebook, ESPN and Turner Sports. Its current contracts with ESPN (worth $5.6 billion) and Turner Sports ($2.6 billion) run through 2021.
The new television deal was part of a flurry of announcements from the M.L.B. owners’ meetings in Atlanta. M.L.B. and the players’ union also said they had reached an agreement to relax rules governing the footwear worn by players during games.
In response to players’ calls for more leeway in expressing themselves on the diamond, the majority of each shoe will no longer be required to be the team’s designated primary color. Instead, players can wear shoes with the following, in any proportion: black, white, and gray; any colors on the players’ uniform; and any additional colors set by their team.
“Players welcome the expanded opportunity to express themselves and engage with fans through innovative design,” Tony Clark, the executive director of the players’ union, said in a statement. “We look forward to seeing their creativity and individuality on the field in 2019.”
Beginning in 2017, players were given a taste of more freedom — but only for one weekend. On Players Weekend, as it was called, they chose nicknames for their jerseys and wore whatever cleats they designed. Some players have pushed the limits with their cleats, even finding designers online to paint unique designs. This season, Cleveland’s Mike Clevinger and Chicago’s Ben Zobrist complained publicly about stern warnings or discipline they received from M.L.B. over their cleat choice or designs.
One reason players, not to mention shoe companies, embraced Players Weekend is that M.L.B. has fallen behind in player promotion and self-expression, compared to other professional leagues, particularly the N.B.A.
“We believe that this agreement strikes the appropriate balance between the shared goal of permitting players to express their individuality while maintaining reasonable restrictions on shoe colors and designs,” M.L.B. Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement.
Among the other announcements Thursday, M.L.B. said it had struck a new deal beginning next season with DAZN, an international sports streaming service launched in 2016, for a daily highlights and live look-in show. The deal is for three years and reportedly worth $300 million. DAZN’s efforts were led by John Skipper, the former ESPN president who resigned abruptly last December.
In addition to the content deals, M.L.B. owners voted to give Manfred, 60, a five-year extension, through the 2024 season.
Manfred was elected commissioner in August 2014 and officially replaced Bud Selig that following January. Under Manfred, the league has posted record profits, enacted pace of play measures, focused on youth and international growth, and negotiated a new collective bargaining agreement with the players’ union that went into effect in 2017.
Before becoming commissioner, Manfred was M.L.B.’s chief operating officer with experience in labor relations and strengthening baseball’s drug testing program.
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