MLB faces a historic shift as potential lockout, media rights and other league changes loom

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Why this MLB season could be the last before major changes for the league

CNBC Sport

Thursday’s Opening Day may be the calm before the storm for Major League Baseball.

The league’s collective bargaining agreement with its players expires at the end of this season. Owners, with the commissioner’s backing, are almost sure to push for a salary cap (which would likely come with a salary floor to get players to the negotiating table).

MLB owners have never been able to get a cap passed by the players union. It’s unclear if the end of the 2026 season will lead to a different result, but MLB Players Association Interim Executive Director Bruce Meyer told ESPN last month he expects a lockout is “all but guaranteed.”

In addition to the CBA’s expiration, there are major shifts underway for baseball media rights. One-third of the league’s teams didn’t have local TV deals in place for this season until this week.

Nine MLB teams – the Washington Nationals, Seattle Mariners, Milwaukee Brewers, St. Louis Cardinals, Miami Marlins, Tampa Bay Rays, Cincinnati Reds, Kansas City Royals, and Detroit Tigers – announced Wednesday their brand new MLB-operated team channels will be carried by DirecTV.

Most of those teams had previously been part of Main Street Sports (previously Diamond Sports Group), which operates FanDuel Sports Networks (previously Bally Sports). That entity has been teetering with liquidation, and the teams terminated their contracts with the company due to missed payments earlier this year.

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A 10th team, the Atlanta Braves, is launching a new network called BravesVision. The Braves and Charter’s Spectrum announced a multiyear distribution agreement earlier this week.

MLB ideally wants the rights to all 30 teams in its control by the end of the 2028 season so that it can sell the in-market local games as a national package to a streamer. That would become the modern replacement to regional sports networks, and it would likely be a new, coveted package for streaming services such as ESPN and Amazon Prime Video.

Also at the end of the 2028 season, MLB’s national media rights for all of its packages will expire, allowing the league to redistribute games to its partners and potentially select new ones.

NBC, ESPN, Fox and a combined CBS/Turner have dominated national rights for the past few decades.

“The key in media negotiations now is having all of your rights available,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told me last year. “If you have all of your content – all of your playoffs, all of your regular season – available, there will be buyers, and I’m confident there will be buyers at a higher price for us.”

Manfred has even floated the idea of expanding to 32 teams and realigning the league geographically, upending or even eliminating the American and National leagues that have existed for more than 100 years.

Soaring TV ratings

It’s, of course, unclear how much of this hypothetical change will actually come to fruition.

But the potential for transformation at MLB is greater than at any of the other Big 4 professional leagues in the U.S.

And yet, baseball isn’t struggling — on the contrary. The implementation of the pitch clock in 2023 has led to shorter games, rising attendance and higher TV ratings.

Rob Manfred, Commissioner of the MLB, attends the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference at the Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, U.S., on July 9, 2025.

David A. Grogan | CNBC

More than 50 million people in the U.S., Canada and Japan watched Game Seven of the World Series last year – the most-watched baseball game in 34 years. MLB recently wrapped up the World Baseball Classic – a global preseason tournament – which captured nearly 11 million viewers on Fox and Fox Deportes for its final game.

MLB team valuations rose 13% from last year. The average MLB team is now worth $2.95 billion, according to CNBC Sport data.

Still, the profitability of the league is in far worse shape than it is for the NFL, NBA and NHL, according to CNBC’s calculations. In 2025, MLB’s 30 teams had an EBITDA — earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — margin of under 2%. Team average revenue was $426 million with average EBITDA of $7 million, including non-MLB ballpark events. In contrast, the comparable margin for the NFL was 20%; the NBA, 21% and the NHL, 22%, according to CNBC’s most recent valuations.

The new CBA at the end of this season could be the first significant step toward a very different MLB. But, similar to the WNBA, which announced its new CBA earlier this week, MLB must ensure negotiations to get a new labor agreement don’t jeopardize a wave of positive momentum.

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