Owners extend Manfred’s contract, TV deal with Fox
Baseball owners have locked down their commissioner and their main broadcast partner, too.
Any decisions on speeding up the game and perhaps making it more enjoyable to watch will have to wait.
After wrapping up two days of meetings at a hotel next to the Atlanta Braves’ Suntrust Park, the owners announced a new contract for Commissioner Rob Manfred, keeping him on the job at least through the 2024 regular season. The 60-year-old started a five-year term in January 2015.
“It seems like about 15 minutes ago I was spending a really dreadful day in a not-very-nice hotel suite in Baltimore waiting to see if I could get vote number - what was
I looking for, 23 right?” quipped Manfred, who won the vote to succeed Bud
Selig in August
2014 after beating out two other contenders. “It seems almost impossible that four years have gone by.”
The owners also signed off on a new television deal with Fox, which still has three seasons to go on its current eight-year contract that pays baseball an average of $525 million per season.
The seven-year extension, which runs through 2028, will be worth just over $5 billion to MLB - roughly a 36 per cent increase to an average of about $715 million per season.
Manfred was asked whether the owners had any reservations to making such a longterm commitment, especially giving the rapidly changing dynamics of the broadcast and online industries.
“I’m a huge believer in the idea that when you have a good partner, even when you’re looking at an uncertain landscape, that good partners find a way to navigate that uncertain landscape,” the commissioner said.
The relationship with Fox, which began in 1996, will continue to include the World Series and All-star Game, as well as extensive playoff coverage on both the network and its allsports cable channel, FS1.
The new agreement also commits Fox to showing more games from the League Championship Series on its main network, beginning in 2019. It was criticized for televising all but one game in this year’s sevengame NLCS between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Milwaukee Brewers on FS1, which as a narrower distruibution.
In addition to the extension with Fox, MLB also approved a $300 million, three-year with DAZN, a subscription video streaming service run by former ESPN president John Skipper. Manfred called it a key part of baseball’s strategy to reach a new generation of fans.
DAZN will co-produce a nightly highlight show at the MLB Network in Secaucus, New Jersey, and do live cut-ins to games Monday through Friday, an arrangement that steers clear of national broadcast slots held by Fox and ESPN on the weekend.
While the deals with Manfred, Fox and DAZN were expected, baseball has yet to come to a consensus on the best ways to improve a sport that suffered a 4 per cent dip in attendance this season to 69.6 million, plunging to its lowest level since 2003.
Manfred and the owners continue to look at ways to speed play. Nine-inning games averaged 3 hours, 4 minutes in 2018.