While the U.S. basketball association (NBA) stroke a $77 billion streaming and broadcast package (with ESPN, Amazon and NBC), the U.S. baseball league (MLB) is struggling to maintain its current TV income levels. The latest blow came from Disney’s sports network ESPN, which is looking to cut a new deal with MLB, lowering the $550 million a year deal to a reported $200 million, which the League has rejected.
Under the current system, the League sells the rights to national TV networks and divides the revenue among the 30 teams. In addition, each baseball franchise sells rights to regional sports networks, which generates about 25 percent of their revenues.
To deal with the financial shortfall, the League is proposing a model whereby the teams would give local TV rights to the League, which, in turn, would sell them as a unified package with revenue distributed among all teams.
But expenditures are not all the same, and that is cause for concern. For example, the Los Angeles Dodgers have a player payroll of $400 million per season, the New York Yankees’ payroll is $300 million, while the Miami Marlins have a payroll of just $68 million.
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