Sunday Night Baseball could be coming to Fox in 2026 after it was announced that MLB and ESPN are splitting after 35 years. During the 33rd Annual Deutsche Bank Media, Internet & Telecom Conference, Fox President and Chief Operating Officer John Nallen talked about the company’s strategic moves and growth with Deutsche Bank’s Media and Telecom Services Analyst Brian Crafts.In a transcript from Investing.com, when Crafts asked if Fox’s sports portfolio was complete and if there was anything the network would like to add, Nallen said this about the MLB:I think what will come to market in some form will be some baseball product, particularly after baseball and ESPN announced that after the season their relationship would change.So, baseball has been a great product for us and we’ll probably look at that and look at it in the context of how it makes sense to us overall. But absent that from a product standpoint, there’s not a lot out there that we’d be attracted to at this point. Okay.Fox currently pays around $728 million for its MLB package, which includes regular season, postseason, and World Series games. ESPN was paying $550 million per year for its Sunday Night Baseball package, which included a Wild Card Series and the Home Run Derby; however, the network reportedly wanted to renew for no more than $200 million per season, which was a number baseball found unacceptable.Now, the MLB is looking to recoup the money from the ESPN deal before the 2026 season begins and could look to several streaming-friendly suitors, including Amazon and Netflix. On the traditional front, NBC has shown “intrigue” in getting back in the MLB sweepstakes by adding Sunday Night Baseball to its portfolio of Sunday sports that includes the NFL, and the NBA beginning next season.Fox is working on its upcoming direct-to-consumers sports and news streaming service, and if it can add more MLB games to its inventory, it would entice more subscribers to sign up. Fox has the NFL, MLB, LIV Golf, MotoGP, and IndyCar under its sports umbrella and on the news side, Fox News saw a 65% share of cable news audience in total day and primetime last month.The NFL could opt out of its TV rights agreement with Fox and others after the 2028-29 season, and this could effect how much networks will pay for MLB rights long term. Knowing that the NFL is a ratings juggernaut, networks could look to budget on other sports to keep or tackle football. Additionally, the NFL is reportedly shopping around a package for international game rights during the 2025 season, that could be worth more than a $1 billion.Baseball has deals in place beyond this season with Fox Sports, TNT Sports, Apple, and The Roku Channel. These deals are set to expire in 2028, when MLB reportedly wants to hit a homerun with a new package without national blackouts.
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