ESPN wants to have it both ways with the MLB rights

If marriage represents the triumph of imagination over intelligence, how Oscar Wilde once supposedly noted, and a second If marriage demonstrates the triumph of hope over experience, the consequence in the sports media business is a little more nuanced. In the age of massive platform disruptions and cash optimization, a happy marriage is best explained as not being fucked by a partner at the same time Kneecaps another. And this algebra of the heart perhaps best explains the modern trouble that ESPN and Major League Baseball are going through at this transitional moment in the media ecosystem.

ESPN, of course, is paying around $550 million for its package Sunday Night BaseballWild Card Playoff games, the Home Run Derby and ESPN+ contests. So imagine this chairman’s contempt Jimmy Pitaro might have felt like that in 2022, when MLB sold a package of Friday night games to Apple for $85 million a year. Or this spring, when MLB sold a package of Sunday morning games to Roku 10 million dollars a season. ESPN executives did not shy away from terminating her contract at the end of next season and negotiating a fairer deal.