Either Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred has close to a $550 million per year alternative to ESPN or he has committed sports business malpractice.
On Thursday morning, ESPN informed MLB it was opting out of the final three years of its $550 million per season contract with baseball after this year. MLB did a fine job of presenting the opt-out as mutual, though something tells me ESPN would still be just fine for the league if the direct deposit for $550 million kept clearing.
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Because Manfred and his right-hand man, Noah Garden, have devalued MLB’s national regular-season product to such a degree with streaming deals, ESPN had no choice but
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