NBC Sports is still months away from airing its first MLB game in a quarter century — an exclusive prime-time March 26 game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers — but NBC Sports president Rick Cordella says he’d love for his company to be involved in baseball beyond its recent three-year deal with the league.
“I think whenever we get into a deal with someone, it’s not for just the period of time,” Cordella said in an interview with The Athletic’s “The Sports Media Podcast” this week. “Fox has had baseball since NBC exited back in the early 2000s, and the NBA didn’t come to market for almost 20 years. So whenever you do these deals and become an incumbent, it really puts you in the pole position to sort of look ahead and do many other deals into the future.”
NBC’s new rights agreement covers the 2026-2028 MLB seasons and includes “Sunday Night Baseball,” the Wild-Card Series on NBC and Peacock and the rights to Roku’s late Sunday morning package. NBC/Peacock will also air the first hour of the MLB Draft. (Peacock/NBCSN and MLB Network will carry the remainder of Day 1) and the Futures Game. The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reported that NBC/Peacock is expected to pay nearly $200 million per year.
“We love the baseball business,” Cordella said. “Before I was here, NBC and MLB were synonymous with each other — the game of the week, Bob Costas, Tony Kubek. You go back in the day, Joe Garagiola. So there’s a little bit of our history there. We had a brief two-year deal on Peacock for Sunday morning, which we liked a lot. We just couldn’t figure out the financials when that came up for rebidding.”
Cordella added: “But when ESPN opted out, we told baseball, ‘How great would it be to take the ‘Sunday Night Football’ tradition, which we’re bringing to ‘Sunday Night Basketball,’ and let’s extend that to ‘Sunday Night Baseball’? We’ll have 50 weeks a year of big-time sports on NBC.
“I think (MLB commissioner) Rob Manfred, (deputy commissioner) Noah Garden and (executive VP of business development) Kenny Gersh, all of them, they agree that more broadcast (TV) for baseball is a good thing. So let’s do this three-year deal; let’s see how it goes. At the end of it, my hope and expectation is that we’re in business for baseball for a super long time.”
Cordella said MLB fans should expect elements from “Sunday Night Football,” including an anthem a la Carrie Underwood and Lenny Kravitz (who is doing “Sunday Night Baseball”).
Additionally, Cordella said NBC’s “Sunday Night Baseball” will feature an on-site pregame show like Fox’s with Kevin Burkhardt, David Ortiz, Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter.
“You want to be on site (for) this stuff so it feels big,” Cordella said.”We’re gonna have what we think will be the best matchups throughout the year and hire top talent that are brand names.”
Cordella said NBC has not yet hired any baseball talent, so stay tuned. On the prospect of airing the draft, Cordella said to pay attention to what kind of audience MLB draws.
“I think college baseball’s getting more popular than ever. I mean, Paul Skenes was kind of a known entity when he came out of LSU. So, having the future Paul Skenes on NBC for the draft, I think it’s interesting, and we’ll see where it goes.
“It’s one of those things where it’s an hour this year, and we’ll see what the ratings are, see what the interest is. Could it be extended in the future? Potentially. We’ll see how it all goes.”
