With a contentious labor battle between Major League Baseball’s players and owners on the horizon, fans can expect to hear plenty of salary cap chatter over the coming year.
How the owners want it and how players will fight tooth and nail to stop it. How it will usher in a new era of competitive balance between the sport’s haves and have-nots, and how MLB already has more parity than most other sports with a cap. And how the issue could lead to a lengthy lockout that could last well into 2027.
Yet while the salary cap promises to dominate the headlines, another looming issue could have an even greater impact on the sport.
Over the past few decades, cable television has played an outsized role in fueling MLB’s revenues. Clubs partnered with regional sports networks to air their local broadcasts, and because almost everyone had cable, providers were willing to pay a premium to ensure the hometown teams were available. The networks became money-printing machines, and the best part was they and the clubs got paid whether you watched baseball or not.
But now in the age of cord cutting and streaming services, that business model has collapsed.
While big market teams like the Dodgers, Yankees and Red Sox have continued to fare OK, many other MLB clubs have faced significant uncertainty with their local broadcasts. The most disruptive event was the bankruptcy of Diamond Sports Group, the country’s largest operator of regional sports networks which at one point held the rights for 14 MLB teams.
DSG initially filed for bankruptcy in March 2023 right on the eve of baseball season, and around that time it also missed a rights payment to the Arizona Diamondbacks. The company emerged from bankruptcy in November 2024, rebranding as the Main Street Sports Group, but its financial woes persisted.
Now the company is expected to cease operations later this spring, and all MLB clubs which remained on its networks have terminated their agreements.
Though some clubs have responded by starting their own networks, MLB itself has largely picked up the slack and is expected to produce broadcasts for 14 of its 30 clubs this season. The affected teams’ games have remained available to watch throughout all of the disruption, but the new arrangements haven’t been nearly as lucrative as what clubs were generating before.
Needless to say, the streaming era has exacerbated the divide between baseball’s big and small market clubs. How MLB responds and whether it can adequately shore up its clubs’ revenues will play a major role in determining the sport’s future.
It won’t be long before the issue comes to a head.
MLB’s current national broadcast deals with Fox, NBC, ESPN, TNT Sports, Netflix and Apple all run through the 2028 season. Those deals collectively pay MLB approximately $2 billion per year, a far cry from the roughly $7 billion annually that the NBA is getting from its new national TV deals signed in 2024.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has made it clear he hopes to sell a national streaming package once the league’s rights deals expire, and if the league succeeds it could mean a massive influx of cash. Atlanta Braves owner Terry McGuirk, who previously served as TBS’s CEO, told The Athletic in 2025 he believes such a deal could potentially be worth $100 billion over 11 years. That would be more than five times what MLB currently makes from its national deals annually.
Such a deal would significantly expand MLB’s reach, enabling the league to better capitalize on its growing markets in Japan, Korea and Taiwan while ending the out-of-market blackouts that have plagued the sport throughout the cable era. With nearly half of the league’s local broadcasting rights already under MLB control and more clubs potentially joining over the next few years, the league will have the ability to sell a sizable chunk of its games to interested streaming services.
But to maximize any national deal, Manfred will somehow need to convince the big market clubs to get on board, too. That won’t be an easy task given the competitive advantage those clubs’ local broadcast deals provide, particularly the Dodgers, whose $344 million per year deal with Charter is a huge reason why the club is able to carry such enormous payrolls.
If Manfred can pull it off, and especially if he can make the necessary adjustments to the league’s revenue sharing program in the process, then not only will every club come away richer, but the small market teams could finally have the ability to compete with the sport’s traditional powerhouses.
That type of level playing field is ultimately what baseball fans really want. So when you hear owners argue that a salary cap is needed to save the sport, don’t forget they’re looking at a gigantic cash windfall whether they get a cap or not.
Latest on realignment
While less of an immediate concern than the upcoming labor and broadcast rights negotiations, expansion is on the horizon for MLB as well.
“I would like to expand,” Manfred told WFAN’s Craig Carton and Chris McMonigle in a recent interview. “I think 32 would be good for us.”
Manfred has long said he wanted to work out the league’s current stadium situations before moving forward with expansion. With the Athletics expected to complete their move to Las Vegas by 2028 and the Tampa Bay Rays working towards a new stadium at Hillsborough College in Tampa, those roadblocks could finally be cleared by the end of the decade, paving the way for the first new expansion franchises since 1998.
With expansion would come divisional realignment, and Manfred also offered his perspective on how that could look.
“We would do it along geographic lines, which could alleviate a ton of the travel burden that’s on players,” Manfred said.
“I think if you did it you’d probably be eight fours,” Manfred added later, referring to eight four-team divisions. “And I think you would try to keep the two-team cities separate.”
Manfred spoke about how geographic realignment would reduce the travel burden on players while allowing the league to maximize its TV windows, especially during the playoffs. He said instead of getting a hypothetical early-round matchup between the Red Sox and Angels that would either be played too late for fans in Boston or too early for fans in Anaheim, that series would instead feature two west coast teams that would be a primetime matchup for both clubs.
One thing Manfred did not address, however, is whether the American League and National League would be preserved or if MLB would adopt an Eastern and Western League set-up similar to the NBA and NHL. Based on his comments, it sounds like he’s leaning towards the latter.
Even if the AL and NL have become functionally identical, they are important parts of the sport’s tradition stretching all the way back to the beginning. It would be a shame to see them disappear entirely.
Locals in camp
With spring training underway across all 30 MLB camps, a number of local standouts are competing for a spot on their respective club’s Opening Day roster.
Ben Rice (Cohasset) and playoff hero Cam Schlittler (Walpole) are back with the New York Yankees, Sal Frelick (Lexington) returns to the Milwaukee Brewers, Mike Yastrzemski (Andover) recently signed with the Atlanta Braves and Matt Shaw (Brimfield) is in a crowded infield competition with the Chicago Cubs.
Shane Smith (Danvers), Sean Burke (Sutton), Sean Newcomb (Middleborough) and Mike Vasil (Wellesley) are all in the mix for the Chicago White Sox starting rotation, and Ian Seymour (Westboro) is competing for a spot in the Tampa Bay Rays bullpen, as P.J. Poulin (Marion) is with the Washington Nationals.
Those 11 are all on their club’s 40-man roster and have appeared in the majors before, but by Opening Day a few others could join them.
Rays catcher Dominic Keegan (Methuen) and Cardinals outfielder Joshua Baez (Boston) were both added to their team’s 40-man roster this winter to protect them from being selected in the Rule 5 Draft, and both will be in big league camp with a chance to make their MLB debut.
Several others will also try to make their team as non-roster invitees, including Marlins lefty Thomas White (Rowley), Athletics lefty Ben Bowden (Lynn), Mariners catcher Nick Raposo (Johnston, R.I.), Rockies lefty Sean Sullivan (Andover) and Royals righty Dennis Colleran (North Attleboro).
