BASEBALL STUMBLES AGAIN WITHOUT ESPN, WHICH ESCAPES A FACIAL-HAIRED FARCE
A sport continues to fall — Rob Manfred deals in mere millions when the NFL and NBA deal in billions — and the commissioner will have Roku to cover Bronx beards and the 2026 expiration of the CBA
Wobbling as always — from a national pastime to a niche to a cubbyhole — baseball is barren without ESPN. The NFL is smothered by $120 billion in media deals, while the NBA just signed for $77 billion. For some cockamamie reason, which should lead to his sorry place among all-time commissioners, Rob Manfred has devalued broadcasts and forced a longtime partner to demand a reduction from $550 MILLION a year.
He has reduced the game to cricket, with occasional Bobbleheads and Shohei Ohtani, providing little to talk about but facial hair.
The rest of the sports planet is broadcast-booming beyond belief, including college football and Caitlin Clark — and maybe hockey, if it was an upturn to see Canada battle the U.S. and tariff threats. Manfred the wicked DJ somehow turned the volume way down, veering backward in what might be recalled as baseball’s ruination. The biggest leagues deal in multiple billions, and he’s quibbling over millions. Ever hear such laughter in the backrooms? When ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro offered less money, Manfred said no and watched the network opt out of its final three years.
He has reduced the game to pickleball, with a pitch clock and the somber end of a collective bargaining agreement in 21 months.
“We do not think it’s beneficial for us to accept a smaller deal to remain on a shrinking platform,” Manfred said.
He has the narrative all wrong. Baseball is shrinking. He will need ESPN when Bristol prefers to air the NBA and NHL playoffs, Clark and the WNBA, offseason NFL news — hell, the Little League World Series — until pro and college football kick off in August. This is not simply the end of Tim Kurkjian. In a sport vanishing among viewers, with only the Dodgers and perhaps two New York teams drawing non-regional interest, this is the demise of serious coverage on what remains the preeminent American sports network.
Not that ESPN doesn’t have problems, with too much gambling and a vague direct-to-consumer apparatus that charges up to $30 a month starting this summer. But baseball is shut down, and even if Ohtani and Juan Soto attract a few eyeballs, they’ll do so with weak numbers on Fox and TBS. Deals with those networks end in 2028.
Could it mean the expiration of the CBA — circle the date: Dec. 1 of next year — means the end of baseball?
Said Manfred: “In order to best position MLB to optimize our rights going in to our next deal cycle, we believe it is not prudent to devalue our rights with an existing partner but rather to have our marquee regular season games, Home Run Derby and Wild Card playoff round on a new broadcast and/or streaming platform. To that end, we have been in conversations with several interested parties around these rights over the past several months and expect to have at least two potential options for consideration over the next few weeks.”
He has a deal with Roku, which pays $10 MILLION a season. And Apple, which pays $85 MILLION a season. Manfred is hallucinating if he thinks Netflix, which conquers the world with an NFL bonanza on Christmas Day, has any interest in a handful of contenders in a sport of 25 non-contenders. Baseball isn’t dead yet.
But it’s dying.
“Over the past several months, ESPN has approached us with a desire to reduce the amount they pay for MLB content over the remainder of the term,” Manfred said. “Publicly and privately ESPN has pointed to lower rights fees paid by Apple and Roku in their deals with MLB. We believe arguments based on the Apple and Roku deals are inapt and we have rejected ESPN’s aggressive effort to reduce rights fees for several reasons.”
ESPN vs. Roku. And we thought Bud Selig was bad for baseball.
“We are grateful for our longstanding relationship with Major League Baseball and proud of how ESPN’s coverage super-serves fans,” the network said. “In making this decision, we applied the same discipline and fiscal responsibility that has built ESPN’s industry-leading live events portfolio as we continue to grow our audience across linear, digital and social platforms.”
No wonder Stephen A. Smith was mocking the only story at spring training. Why not crack on the New York Yankees for allowing players to wear beards, right here in 2025, which abandons George Steinbrenner’s 1976 edict? His son, Hal, says Vice President JD Vance wears growth on his chin and lower cheeks. Why not his players, at long last?
“Given how important it is to that generation and given that it is the norm in this world today, that was somewhat unreasonable, so I made the change,” Steinbrenner said. “After great consideration, we will be amending our expectations to allow our players and uniformed personnel to have well-groomed beards moving forward. It is the appropriate time to move beyond the familiar comfort of our former policy.”
Said pitching ace Gerrit Cole: “The only information we were offered is that we’re not trying to look like Duck Dynasty. No diss against Duck Dynasty. They’re grinding in the woods all the time. You don’t really have another option. But that was the only clarification we got.”
Smith thrust one final ESPN sword into Manfred’s gut. “A 20-minute press conference over facial hair? I mean, what a disgrace,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. I’m a Yankee fan, you know I’m a die-hard Yankee fan. I’m trying to keep my cool. You understand what I’m saying? But I mean, damn. You ain’t won a World Series title since 2009. You ain’t been to one since then until last year — you got romped by the Dodgers.
“And facial hair is a reason there was a press conference?”
Roku will be all over the story.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.