I am not a baseball fan. Nothing against it, just not a huge fan of it. Got into football for a season or two. Got really into hockey for a while. Took an interest in boxing for about five-minutes in the mid-90s. Baseball just never grabbed my attention.
I say all of that to let you know that when I cover a baseball story, it’s not because I care about baseball. I do not. But this could be a huge story for Apple and its Services business. The New York Post ran a report Monday, saying that Apple is in “serious talks” to broadcast Major League Baseball games.
It’s not like Apple would be the exclusive home of Major League Baseball. According to the Post:
The package MLB has been attempting to sell is weekday national games that ESPN recently relinquished. ESPN will no longer have regular Monday and Wednesday games. The ESPN games were not exclusive in local markets. It is unclear at this point if Apple would be allowed to wall off these select games from regional sports network coverage or not.
The report likens the potential Apple deal to one between Amazon and the National Football League. That deal is seen by the Post as bigger than this rumored deal, since it’ll see Amazon “become the exclusive home of NFL ‘Thursday Night Football’ in the fall.” That deal apparently cost Amazon “more than a billion dollars per year,” according to the piece. It’s thought that the MLB on Apple arrangement would cost Apple less.
Both Apple and MLB declined to comment for the Post piece.
