Tag: ESPN

MLB is reportedly selling MLB.tv. Let’s dive in.

Trying to sort out just why and what this means.

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MLB selling the technology behind MLB.tv, BAMTech, to Disney? Sure, that made sense each time they let the Mouse bite off a piece, as the league got a ton of money for the tech that powered a service they could keep using without owning the rights to it and licensing it out themselves, as they had done for WWE and the NHL.

MLB selling MLB.tv itself? Well that’s going to take a little more thinking through. That’s reportedly what’s going down, with ESPN the buyer, as part of a reshuffling by both parties in terms of their baseball broadcasting priorities.

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Rob Manfred is denying there are plans for a lockout, again

Rob Manfred is contradicting the words of Rob Manfred once again.

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For some reason, people keep asking MLB commissioner Rob Manfred about the looming threat of a lockout after the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement. It’s so weird how this happens after you use an interview at the New York Times (by way of the Athletic) to say that there will be a lockout after the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement, but that’s just how the media works, am I right?

Manfred has spent the first half of 2025 pretending he didn’t say that lockouts should be considered the new normal, as just part of the process of negotiating a new CBA, that he didn’t liken them to “using a .22, as opposed to a shotgun or a nuclear weapon.” In February, Sportico relayed that Manfred had “tampered down his rhetoric” by saying that, “I’m not going to speculate how we’re going to negotiate with the PA. We’re a year away. I owe it to the owners to coalesce around our bargaining approach. And quite frankly I owe it to our fans not to get into this too early. It’s bad enough when you’re doing it and bargaining, and everyone is worried about it. We’re just not there yet.” Attempt number one at putting the cat back in the bag, basically.

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