• by Wayne Friedman , 6 hours ago

Major League Baseball has struck new three-year deals with ESPN, NBCUniversal and Netflix -- amounting to $800 million per year among all partners, according to reports.

The biggest change is that regular-season games will air on NBC Television Network for the first time in 26 years.

NBCU will get “Sunday Night Baseball” -- which has aired on ESPN since 1990. It will now air on NBC Television Network and streamer Peacock. NBC will also get a post-season wild-card series for NBC and Peacock.

ESPN will shift to airing a national midweek regular-season game.

As part of the deal, ESPN will also sell advertising time on MLB.TV -- a streaming service owned by Major League Baseball that offers out-of-market games to consumers.

Newcomer Netflix will now air the T-Mobile Home Run Derby as well as special event games, including 2026 MLB at Field of Dreams Game and the World Baseball Classic in Japan.

Reports suggest the three-year deals (2026-2028) break down with ESPN paying $550 million per year, NBCU paying $200 million and Netflix paying $50 million.

National TV advertising for all Major League Baseball games (Fox, ESPN, TBS, FS1, ESPN 2, MLB Network) in the just-concluded regular season was $361.4 million -- down 6%, compared to a year ago, when it was $383.9 million, according to estimates from EDO Ad EnGage.

ESPN took in $34.4 million in advertising revenue for its “Sunday Night Baseball.”

Major League Baseball touts that the seventh game of this year’s World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays averaged a massive global audience (in the U.S., Canada, and Japan) of 51 million, with the entire series averaging 34 million.

In the U.S., the entire seven-game World Series averaged 16.1 million Nielsen-measured viewers across Fox Television Network and its associated platforms -- the event’s best result in eight years.