Sunday
Night Fights
ESPN Sues Baseball In Attempt To Keep TV Contract
By George Stahl
NEW YORK (AQB)--Major League Baseball wants to strike ESPN out of regular-season baseball after this year because the network seeks to bump three Sunday night games in September in order to show NFL games.
On Tuesday, ESPN filed a lawsuit against the league in U.S. District Court in New York to try to preserve its baseball contract, which goes through 2002. The move comes nearly two weeks after baseball sent ESPN a letter stating its wish to terminate their regular-season agreement at the end of the season.
The dispute does not affect ESPN's separate post-season pact, which runs through 2000.
"We are extremely disappointed with baseball's action and completely disagree with their assertions," ESPN President George Bodenheimer said in a statement Tuesday. "ESPN has the right under our agreement to televise these three Sunday Night Baseball games on ESPN2. By refusing to permit this, MLB has violated its obligations to ESPN."
"It's outrageous for baseball to attempt to terminate its agreement with ESPN," he said.
Paul Beeston, Major League Baseball's chief operating officer, said in a separate statement Tuesday that baseball "regrets that it was forced to terminate its contract with ESPN at the end of the season. We have had a good relationship with ESPN throughout this decade, and we still cling to hopes that it will continue into the next."
'Significant Viewer Interest'
ESPN claims that its contract with baseball allows it to pre-empt up to 10 games a year for "events of significant viewer interest" - as long as MLB approves the switch. However, baseball's approval cannot be "unreasonably withheld."
In the past, ESPN said, baseball has allowed the network to pre-empt games for events such as U.S. Open golf, a Busch auto race and the World Cup. The league already has given ESPN the OK to pre-empt the Wednesday night doubleheader on June 2 in case the network needs the day for NHL playoff games.
Baseball, though, has not allowed the network to bump its September games to ESPN2 for the NFL, and ESPN officials aren't sure why.
"We have never gotten a reasonable response. You'll have to ask them; I don't get it," said Dick Glover, ESPN's executive vice president of programming.
But network officials are sure that they can move the baseball games to ESPN2, which is in about 15% fewer homes than ESPN (76.2 million for ESPN, 64.5 million for ESPN2).
"We're absolutely, totally confident that the court is going to uphold our rights," Glover said.
In The NFL's Shadow
Although baseball officials were unavailable to comment directly, one reason they don't want to move their September games to ESPN2 is because it would create the perception that late-season baseball games are less significant than early season NFL games.
Of course, many more viewers already feel that way. In September 1997, the four NFL games on TNT that went head-to-head with ESPN's Sunday night baseball had an average rating of 9.1. The four baseball games on ESPN registered only a 1.7 average rating. A cable rating point equals 994,000 homes.
Last year, ESPN began its new full-season Sunday night NFL schedule. After being unable to settle the Sunday night conflict with baseball, the network gave the three disputed baseball games back to the league, one of which turned out to be the game in which Cal Ripken sat out, ending his consecutive games streak. Nonetheless, ESPN's three September NFL games scored a 7.3 rating.
"I think there is no disagreement that the NFL represents the gold standard of viewer interest," Glover said. "To suggest that the NFL is of lesser interest [than a Busch auto race, the NHL playoffs and other pre-empted events] is just preposterous on the surface."
ESPN officials said Tuesday that they negotiated their contract with baseball in case they got the Sunday night NFL contract.
"Our contract specifically anticipated just this kind of occurance," Glover said. "That's why we built in the right to pre-empt up to 10 events and the rights to place the pre-empted games on ESPN2. That's in the agreement."
'Left With Absolutely No Choice'
And it's that agreement that baseball said it would terminate in its April 21 letter to ESPN.
"We were left with absolutely no choice but, today, to go to court," said Glover, who explained the nearly two-week delay in the network's public reaction to baseball's letter as "things take time."
ESPN, in its lawsuit, asked for an injunction preventing baseball from ending the deal, an unspecified amount of money in damages and a declaratory judgment forcing baseball to grant permission to switch the three telecasts. The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin.
"We're willing to give baseball more than we're required by contract to do," Glover said. "We want to continue, but baseball left us no choice. We've got to go to court to protect what was fairly negotiated."
ESPN's Sunday Night Proposals
ESPN and Major League Baseball have spent a long time trying to resolve this situation. Glover said in ESPN's conference call that the network has offered the league three proposals to try to end the stalemate. All of which, he said, did not include a reduction in rights free.
ESPN's three proposals were:
- Show the games on ESPN2 and over the air in local markets, giving baseball greater distribution than even ESPN.
- Give the Sunday night games back to baseball, and add games in September on Tuesdays and/or Fridays. Those games would be chosen three days ahead of time, allowing the network to pick contests more critical to the pennant races. Currently, the Sunday night games are chosen in November, and often do not mean anything in September.
- Give the Sunday night games back to baseball, forgive the league for not providing one Wednesday night late game during the year, and show at least six two-hour Baseball Tonight programs in September.
Glover said not only did baseball officials reject the proposals, but they never came back with a serious counteroffer.
"[Baseball] never came back with a proposal dealing specifically with Sunday night or September coverage, rather the only thing they've come back with were proposals to either charge us a huge amount of money to renew and/or extend the deal we have, or cut back the deal we have and charge us a lot more money.
"It was a totally disproportionate response to what was the issue at hand," Glover said, explaining that baseball wanted ESPN to increase its annual regular-season rights fee by 3.5 times to approximately $135 million. The network's baseball rights fee is estimated to be about $40 million a year, while its NFL rights cost, on average, about $600 million a year, or $4.8 billion over eight years.
"We're a little baffled by the fact that we have never gotten any kind of reasonable response or offer," said Glover, who added that he felt betrayed by baseball and that ESPN had done everything it could.
"All we could do is now go to a court and say to the court, 'Hey, we'd like you to tell baseball that they have to live up to the agreement they make with us.'"
No Comment From Competitors
ESPN, which has had a contract with baseball since 1990, carries about 85 regular-season games each year and about 11 episodes of Baseball Tonight each week (generally two every day, except for Sundays and Wednesdays).
"We are talking about nine hours of programming in the course of the almost 500 hours of dedicated MLB coverage we provide each year," Bodenheimer said about the dispute.
This year's conflicting games are scheduled for Sept. 12, 19 and 26, with two involving the Milwaukee Brewers, which are owned by the family of baseball commissioner Bud Selig. The games are Milwaukee at Colorado, San Francisco at San Diego and Houston at Milwaukee.
The football games are the Pittsburgh Steelers at Cleveland Browns on Sept. 12, which is the first game for the "expansion" Browns; the New York Jets at Buffalo Bills on Sept. 19; and the New York Giants at New England Patriots on Sept. 26.
Turner and Fox Sports Net, two networks who might benefit if ESPN were to lose baseball, declined comment on the situation.
Also, representatives of the baseball players association knew nothing about this when contacted Tuesday afternoon.
The
Associated Press contributed information to this story.
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