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July 17, 2006

The Ledger Domain

MLB's 7-Year-Hitch to Fox and the All-Star Game

by Maury Brown

I never tire of looking at PNC Park.

As I sat watching this year’s All-Star Game, wondering if the Nuttings and Kevin McClatchy would ever figure out that they’re sitting on one-half of a great baseball club (the stadium), “television” kept coming to mind.

As Trevor Hoffman’s pitches hung out there like tasty treats for the likes of Paul Konerko, Troy Glaus, and then Mike Young--whose triple with 2 outs in the 9th was a punch to the throat of the National League--my mind kept coming back to the 7-year network television rights extension that Fox and MLB had announced earlier in the day, and how the All-Star Game ratings might turn out for this year’s mid-summer classic.

7 More Years… with a twist - As I mentioned last week in Part II of my series on the upcoming CBA, Fox’s deal with MLB was set to expire at the end of the season. Fox wasn’t exactly leaping across the table to shake MLB’s hand on a new deal, as they were claiming that they had lost $200 million over the course of the 5-year, $2.5 billion agreement that had been in place since 2001. Sports, as a whole, has been reported by the broadcasting industry to be a loss leader. The word from the brass at Fox was, “We’re interested, but only if we can make money on the deal.”

So, early Tuesday morning, word started coming in of a new MLB network deal. Fox would still be in the mix, but there was a twist: Turner Sports would get a deal as well.

By the time the 1 p.m. press conference at PNC Park had concluded, the 7-year deal that starts in 2007 started to come into focus. The deals between Fox and Turner Sports are shaping up as follows:

• Fox will retain the World Series, All-Star Game, and one of the League Championship Series.
• In addition, Fox will continue to show its Saturday Game of the Week, and increase the afternoon games from 18 to 26 weeks, with starting time moving from 1 to 3:30 pm Eastern.
• The other LCS that Fox does not carry is still up for grabs, presumably between TBS and ESPN.
• Fox and cable (as mentioned, TBS or ESPN being interested) will alternate between the ALCS and NLCS.
• Word from the Commissioner's Office is that the second LCS will be shown on cable.
• Fox is dropping the division series, with Turner Sports picking up the slack.
• Turner Sports will use TBS to show the division series games, with TNT being used for overflow programming.
• Starting in 2008, Turner will also get a Sunday regular-season game of the week.
• Turner will get an All-Star Game selection show.
• Starting this year, any tie-breaker games to determine who gets into the playoffs will be shown by Turner.
• Due to the shift with Turner, starting in 2008, TBS will no longer carry Braves games nationally, but instead will show 45 games locally on WTBS.
• Terms of the TBS portion of the deal: $104 million annually.
• Terms of Fox’s portion of the deal: $257 million annually, down from $417 million annually, which ends this year.
• Terms of the LCS games, still up for grabs by cable, look to be worth around $15 million per game.
• When adding in the ESPN deal brokered last year ($296 million annually), Tim Brosnan, MLB's executive vice president of business has said that MLB total national television media revenues will increase by 19%.