This Day in Sports Business History September 13th

The September 13, 1997 deal between Major League Baseball and ESPN Radio was a pivotal moment in sports media rights. MLB signed a five-year, $40 million agreement with ESPN, which gave the network exclusive national radio rights to broadcast regular season and postseason games. This marked the end of MLB’s 21-year partnership with CBS Radio, which had been the sport’s primary national radio home since the mid-1970s.

The move reflected MLB’s shift toward ESPN as a central media partner, following earlier television deals in the 1990s that expanded ESPN’s role in baseball coverage. For ESPN, the deal solidified its reputation as the “home of baseball” across multiple platforms — TV, radio, and eventually digital. For MLB, it represented both a significant financial boost and a strategic partnership with a network targeting younger, sports-focused audiences, rather than the broader news-talk approach of CBS Radio.

This deal helped lay the groundwork for ESPN Radio to become a dominant player in national sports broadcasting, and it fit into a broader trend in the 1990s of leagues aligning themselves with ESPN’s 24-hour sports media model.