1. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred shared a couple of important nuggets during an interview with ESPN’s Karl Ravech on Sunday.
Manfred said he expects the sport to have an announcement soon on the broadcast futures of the wild-card round, Sunday Night Baseball and the Home Run Derby.
“We’re having very detailed conversations with a number of parties, including ESPN,” Manfred said. “We hope to have it resolved in the next couple of weeks. It’s a little bit like a jigsaw puzzle we’re trying to put together, but we’ll have it resolved in the next few weeks.”
With ESPN opting out of its deal with MLB, making those three packages available on the open market, it sure sounds like baseball will split up the pie and bring in two or three partners to handle coverage. Reports have stated NBC/Peacock, Apple, Netflix and ESPN are all in the mix. If you’re a baseball fan, get ready for some playoff games to air exclusively on a streaming service. That should definitely go over well with a fan base that skews older.
Speaking of the playoffs, it appears that spicing up the postseason for television is behind Manfred’s plan for realignment. He told Ravech that late playoff windows have been problematic because the matchups can feature an East Coast team vs. a West Coast team.
Manfred’s hope is that with realignment, the playoffs will help ratings.
“Our postseason format would be for entities like ESPN because you’d be playing up out of the East, out of the West, and that 10 o’clock timeslot where we sometimes get Boston-Anaheim, would be two West Coast teams and that 10 o’clock slot that’s a problem for us sometimes becomes a real opportunity for our West Coast audience.”
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred says expansion could spark major changes:
— Front Office Sports (@FOS) August 18, 2025
• Geographic realignment to ease travel
• A more appealing postseason format for partners like ESPN
• New opportunities in untapped markets
pic.twitter.com/5r0qXVYYni
I’m not sure how I feel yet about the realignment change, but I do appreciate Manfred’s honesty in the struggles baseball has had with ratings for the late windows during the postseason.
2. I don’t like Fox’s new NFL score bug, which we saw during last season’s Super Bowl and again during Sunday’s Bills-Bears preseason game. You want the score bug to be unobtrusive and easy to digest. This bug is clunky and looks stupid.
Fox officially tweaks the NFL scorebug they debuted at the Super Bowl, most notably replacing the team abbreviations with team logos. pic.twitter.com/Awj7FfwTGZ
— Sports TV News & Updates (@TVSportsUpdates) August 18, 2025
3. Rich Eisen last hosted SportsCenter in 2003. He will do the honors tonight following the Bengals-Commanders preseason game.
4. If you’re an NBA fan, you’ll want to keep this handy for the upcoming season.
2025-26 NBA Season Watch Guide 📺✍️
— NBA (@NBA) August 14, 2025
Through the NBA’s partnership renewal with Disney and new agreements with NBCUniversal and Amazon, the 2025-26 schedule of national games will generally feature Mondays on Peacock, Tuesdays on NBC/Peacock, Wednesdays on ESPN/ESPN App,… pic.twitter.com/4KVpP76Vtq
5. I just want this on the record: Raiders rookie running back Ashton Jeanty will be a top-five most fun player to watch in the NFL this season.
Freight train comin' 🚂#SFvsLV | 📺FOX5 pic.twitter.com/7wRX7LNKcJ
— Las Vegas Raiders (@Raiders) August 16, 2025
6. The latest SI Media With Jimmy Traina features a conversation with TNT’s Mike Golic Jr., who will be an analyst for Big 12 college football games this season.
Golic Jr. talks about going into a full-time role as an analyst after working just four games last year, the changing television landscape in college football and trying to keep up with which teams are in which conference.
In addition, Golic Jr. reveals the best and worst thing about doing a daily show with his father, what his reaction was to the end of Mike Golic Sr.’s longtime radio show Mike & Mike and how they navigate the world of gambling while doing a show for FanDuel.
Golic Jr. also talks about the role social media has played in his career and where he stands with social media today.
Following Golic Jr., Sal Licata from WFAN and SNY joins me for my weekly “Traina Thoughts” segment. We talk about my day at a CBS NFL media event, Sal getting duped by a fake Odell Beckham Jr. retirement announcement, the circus of rumors surrounding Howard Stern and the future of his SiriusXM show, a terrible taxi cab incident and more.
You can listen to the SI Media With Jimmy Traina podcast below or on Apple and Spotify.
7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: Happy 56th birthday to Christian Slater. May his day be filled with lots of caviar.
Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Google. You can also follow Jimmy on X and Instagram.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Rob Manfred Drops Two Big Updates on MLB’s Television Future.
