MLB and Fox agree to a mammoth new TV deal

Apparently nobody watches baseball, but you’d never know that based off of what Fox is paying to put it on TV. Major League Baseball announced Thursday that them and Fox have reached a seven-year multi-platform rights agreement worth a whopping $5.1 billion.

Under the terms of the television agreement, FOX Sports and FOX Deportes will retain exclusive rights to airing the World Series, one of the two annual League Championship Series and two of the four annual Division Series and the All-Star Game. Beyond that, it was also announced that MLB reached a three-year, $300 million deal with streaming platform DAZN for a weeknight program in which they’ll bounce around from game to game, similar to the successful NFL program Redzone.

I dig the idea of a Redzone style product. That’s pretty much how I watch baseball now. I’ve subscribed to MLV.tv for a few years, which is a great service, and I tune into games when, like, the bases or loaded or a reliever is about to blow a game. It’s great!

So, despite owners and broadcasters crying about how attendance is down and nobody is tuning into baseball games anymore and millennials can’t look up from their fuckin’ goddamn iPhones for more than two seconds to catch the action, things seem to be going pretty well financially for Major League Baseball.

Now, of course, this might be a little bit of a reach, but given how much cash Fox is shelling out to air baseball games, it’s hard not to think about Rogers and the kind of coin they’re pulling from producing and broadcasting their own Blue Jays content. I mean, they’re putting out 162 games to the entire country over the span of six months with pre- and post-game footage virtually every single day, so we’re certainly going to see them re-invest some of that in the team sooner rather than later, right? RIGHT?!?!?!!