Comcast Splurges $600 Million As The Streaming Wars Fight For MLB Scraps…

America's pastime has officially hit the street corner… 

Baseball doesn’t have fans anymore. It has media partners willing to pay to keep the corpse warm. Case in point: The MLB is chopping up its schedule and selling it to whoever shows up with a check.

(Source: Giphy) 

In short, NBCUniversal is about to cough up $600 million for three years of rights that includes Sunday night games, a handful of playoff scraps, and some filler on Peacock that nobody asked for. Comcast stock barely blinked. Why? Investors know this isn’t about baseball, it’s about keeping Peacock from looking like a graveyard of reruns and canceled sitcoms.

(Source: Wall Street Journal) 

But then, over in the land of Netflix and Chill, they’re also trying to get their own thrill of “chill” with the MLB. As I’ve detailed in a previous article, the company is negotiating to pay $35 million a year for the Home Run Derby. Not the season. Not the playoffs. Just the one night where hitters take batting practice in front of a drunk July crowd. And they’re doing it all in the name of “pretending” to be in live sports… while not having to deal with the mess. Translation: The Derby is safe… no rain delays, no 162-game schedule, no dead air. Just dingers, then credits roll.

(Source: Giphy) 

Now obviously, the MLB is acting like the only decent Brothel lady in town. Which is why Disney is also cashing in its vouchers as they’re trying to shove MLB.TV into its new $30 streaming bundle, hoping a few diehards will actually pay. Keep in mind, Rob Manfred has already trashed ESPN for treating baseball like background noise, but the league can’t afford to walk away from another bidder. And ESPN can’t afford to look like it’s giving up on America’s pastime while it’s busy cutting billion-dollar checks to the NFL and WWE.

So given all of this, where does that leave us? Well in my personal opinion (that no one asked for), this really isn’t about “growing the game.” Baseball hasn’t grown in 20 years. Instead, it's about networks shoveling more money into live sports because nothing else keeps audiences from skipping the ads. The MLB knows this, which is why it’s slicing off the Home Run Derby as a separate asset, milking the postseason for all it’s worth, and letting anyone with a streaming app buy their way into the room. Meaning, NBC gets relevance, Netflix gets a test drive, and ESPN gets to look like it’s still in the fight. 

(Source: Giphy) 

But who cares about the perception of it all when media companies overpay, amirite? Baseball cashes the checks because even though it’s been stripped of steroids, and stripped of mystique, it is still valuable enough to rent out, one dinger at a time. Meaning, keep your eyes on these bigly moves and place your bets accordingly, friends. Until next time… 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News holds positions in Disney and Netflix as mentioned in the article.