NBC nearing $600M deal for MLB’s ‘Sunday Night Baseball’ package

Major League Baseball is in advanced talks with NBC to ink a three-year rights deal for the network to carry games. 

The deal would see NBC shell out nearly $200 million annually and would see the network carry MLB games on Sunday nights, the Wall Street Journal reported. 

MLB games would air on the broadcast network when it isn’t carrying “Sunday Night Football” or NBA games, which it also has the rights to on Sunday nights, while other games would be aired on its streaming service, Peacock, and the network would have some rights to playoff games. 

NBC has a growing array of sports offerings on its streaming service, which includes the NFL, college football, golf, the WNBA, the Olympics and Premier League Soccer. 

Thursday was a busy day for sports media news as The Athletic also reported that the MLB and ESPN had a framework agreement that would give the Worldwide Leader in Sports the exclusive rights to sell all out-of-market regular season games digitally, along with the in-market games for the five clubs whose local rights are under MLB control. 

MLB.tv would become part of ESPN’s direct-to-consumer offerings as part of the deal, according to the report. 

The Wall Street Journal also reported that Netflix was close to a deal to stream the Home Run Derby as part of a $35 million-a-year deal that would run through 2028. 

Reports have been flying around Major League Baseball’s broadcast rights in recent days 

Yahoo Sports had reported earlier that Apple TV+ was looking to drop the “Friday Night Baseball” package it has and that NBC/Peacock would be in line to snag those rights, but The Athletic also reported that Apple was potentially going to pick up an MLB package. 

With the number of reports surfacing about Major League Baseball’s broadcast rights talks, it seems some sort of announcement could be coming soon.