ESPN Wasted Money On NBA, Now Misses Out On Rapidly Growing Major League Baseball

ESPN has made any number of confusing decisions over the past decade. 

They hired a collection of people and personalities that were divisive, off-putting, and ultimately, extremely unpopular. Jemele Hill and Sarah Spain as just a few examples, while parting ways with Sage Steele. They tolerated open left-wing political discourse for years, then started a "no politics" policy that was promptly either ignored or selectively enforced. Personalities like Mina Kimes continue to be divisive. Ryan Clark is, well, almost always an embarrassment to the organization, and Mark Jones has made any number of insane, unhinged remarks on social media. 

It's not just the personalities that are tough to defend, however. It's how they've chosen to allocate resources, with those decisions rapidly coming back to bite them. 

That became even more obvious with the announcement this week that ESPN had found its replacement for Major League Baseball's "Sunday Night Baseball" package.

RELATED: ESPN’s ‘Sunday Night Baseball’ Replacement Isn’t Exactly A Home Run

And it's… a collection of women's sports? 

Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani on the field at Dodger Stadium during the 2025 Major League Baseball season. (Jonathan Hui-Imagn Images)

ESPN Self-Inflicted Wounds Continue

There's nothing wrong with showing more women's sports, and obviously the WNBA has seen some level of growth in recent seasons, thanks in large part to Caitlin Clark. The broader issue is that they chose to get into an extensive, expensive partnership with the NBA. Despite that league's years of ratings and general decline. 

Because they spent a fortune, nearly $3 billion per year, to broadcast a sport that fewer people are watching or care about, they either didn't have the money to spend on baseball, or weren't willing to risk more. Even though Major League Baseball has seen substantial growth in attendance, fan interest, and television ratings. 

MLB.tv, the league's streaming service that shows out-of-market games, saw viewership explode 27% in 2025, a big increase that wasn't influenced by new rating measurements. Sunday Night Baseball was up 21% year-over-year. Fox had a 9% increase in viewership for national games, TBS jumped 29%, and MLB Network went up 13%. Regional sports networks showing MLB games saw their ratings increase too. 

Despite having two temporary stadium situations with the Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays, attendance grew again to 71.4 million, the highest number in nearly two decades. It marked the third straight year of attendance growth, the first time MLB's achieved that since 2005-2007. The Los Angeles Dodgers had over 4 million fans attend games this past year, an incredible number considering the entire NFL drew just over 18 million fans in 2025-2026. Shohei Ohtani has become the rare baseball star to transcend the sport and cross over to the general sports population.

Baseball is growing in popularity, and has momentum behind it. But ESPN chose to chase a dwindling audience with the NBA instead, for inexplicable reasons. Maybe for political purposes, maybe because they believe basketball has a younger demographic, or because they thought social media clips equaled popularity.

So, instead of "Sunday Night Baseball," we get… whatever the heck this is. Shows you the importance of leadership and quality decision-making. Both things that ESPN's struggled with for quite some time.