MLB, Roku in 'advanced talks' regarding Sunday morning broadcasts

Major League Baseball is in “advanced talks” with the streaming company Roku about hosting Sunday morning broadcasts this season, writes Andrew Marchand of the Athletic. 

Joe Flint of the Wall Street Journal first reported two weeks ago that Roku was a potential option to carry the Sunday morning games.

MLB introduced the Sunday morning game as part of a streaming deal with Peacock in 2022. The NBC streaming service walked away from that agreement a few weeks ago. 

Marchand writes that Peacock wanted to renegotiate the fee to pay the league roughly $10M per season, well below the annual $30M price it paid for the first two years. It isn’t how clear how much the Roku talks, if agreed upon, would pay the league.

Whatever the specifics, MLB evidently finds the negotiations with Roku more promising than Peacock’s recent offers had been. If talks between MLB and Roku result in a deal, the service would have exclusive broadcasting rights to a Sunday game starting at either 11:30 a.m. or shortly after noon EDT. 

No other games would start before 1:30 p.m. that day, so the Roku game would be the sole contest for a couple hours. Peacock had 19 such broadcasts last year ranging from late April to early September. Marchand writes that Roku may take a reduced number — at least in 2024 — because five weeks of the season have already passed.

MLB has an ongoing partnership with Apple TV+ that broadcasts two Friday night games exclusively on that streaming service. That deal reportedly pays the league $85M per season. The Roku deal would certainly be far less lucrative, reflecting both the different time slot and increased uncertainty about the broadcasting landscape.

The Diamond Sports Group bankruptcy made the future of regional sports networks a large storyline of the offseason. While the conglomerate survived to carry local broadcasts for 12 teams in 2024, questions remain about its long-term viability.

Diamond found itself back in the news this week after failing to reach agreement on a new deal with Comcast (link via ESPN’s Alden González). The distributor pulled Diamond’s Bally Sports networks off its channels as a result, leaving its subscribers without access to in-market broadcasting in cities where Diamond has the rights. 

MLB’s RSN deals with Diamond prevent the league from lifting blackouts for fans affected by the Diamond/Comcast dispute. That leaves fans affected with little recourse but to hope for Comcast and Diamond to eventually work out an agreement.