Major League Baseball and ESPN announced Thursday that their national television deal would be cut short after this season, with baseball rights now on the market for the following three years.

In a letter to owners first published by The Athletic, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred specifically cited “new broadcast and/or streaming platform(s)” as the ideal next home for marquee rights including Sunday Night Baseball, the Home Run Derby and Wild Card playoff matchups. 

ESPN leadership informed the league Thursday morning that it intended to opt out, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

As Sportico reported, ESPN had been discussing renegotiating its terms of a deal first signed in 2021. While the network scored a five-year ratings high of 1.51 million average viewers on Sundays in 2024, the Disney-owned network was either looking to add inventory to its package or lower its $550 million annual fee to the league. 

Since the start of the latest ESPN tie-up, MLB has signed smaller deals with streamers Apple and Roku for a combined $95 million annually. It briefly offered certain games on YouTube from 2019-2022 as well.

“ESPN has approached us with a desire to reduce the amount they pay for MLB content over the remainder of the term,” Manfred wrote in his letter. “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.”

In a statement, ESPN said it remains open to working with MLB in future years. As the company launches a new direct-to-consumer streaming service this fall, there has been talk of potentially including certain local or out-of-market games in the offering. 

Other players could now emerge from broadcast networks such as CBS and NBC to streaming giants Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube. 

MLB set recent ratings highs during the playoffs. The League Championship Series and the World Series were the most watched since 2017, according to Nielsen, with viewership among the 18-to-34 demo jumping 101% over the prior year for the Dodgers-Yankees Fall Classic. 

In his letter, Manfred suggested that MLB would present owners with “at least two potential options” to take over the rights “over the next few weeks.”

ESPN will still broadcast its typical MLB action this year, and it recently announced that Joe Buck would return to the diamond to call Opening Day action. It cited “fiscal responsibility” as part of what Manfred called a mutual agreement to terminate the agreement, which otherwise would have run through 2028, when parallel deals with Fox and Warner Bros. also expire.

Manfred has expressed interest in offering additional national TV packages at that point, depending on which local rights—both linear and streaming—the league is able to control. The latest decision was made “optimize our rights” heading into that negotiation cycle, he wrote.

He added that the league has “not been pleased with the minimal coverage that MLB has received on ESPN’s platforms over the past several years outside of the actual live game coverage.”

Sunday Night Baseball and Baseball Tonight have been on the air since 1990. However, daily airings of Baseball Tonight during the regular season ended after 2016.

(This was published as a breaking news story and updated afterward with additional details throughout.)