The Big Lead

RedBird’s Gerry Cardinale says 4 MLB cities will anchor 'centralized media company'

The sports mogul articulated a bold vision for the future of MLB broadcasting contracts in a post-RSN world.

By J.P. Hoornstra

New York Yankees president Randy Levine looks on with AC Milan owner Gerry Cardinale in the foreground before the match between AC Milan and Manchester City at Yankee Stadium.
New York Yankees president Randy Levine looks on with AC Milan owner Gerry Cardinale in the foreground before the match between AC Milan and Manchester City at Yankee Stadium. / Lucas Boland-Imagn Images
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How will live Major League Baseball games be consumed and distributed in 2028 and beyond?

Commissioner Rob Manfred has answered the question of consumption, in so many words, in a series of interviews in recent years. Speaking to The Athletic last November, the commissioner said MLB plans to create national packages for major streaming companies to bid on in three years, when the league’s national television deals with Fox and Turner are set to expire.

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MLB and ESPN opted out of the final three years of their contract in February. Manfred at the time called ESPN's linear-first business model "a shrinking platform" in an internal memo acquired by The Athletic. Nothing before or since has more powerfully suggested that MLB considers streaming consumers its top priority.

At a distance, the economics of distribution seem as uncertain as ever. And unlike the gradual advent of regional sports networks in the 1980s and 1990s, the coming change promises to be sudden.

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So, how will the next three years unfold behind the scenes between MLB and the big streamers?

Gerry Cardinale, the RedBird Capital Founder and Managing Partner whose holdings include shares of Fenway Sports Group and the YES Network, is well-positioned to make an educated guess.

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In an interview with CNBC Sport, he told Alex Sherman that baseball's biggest RSNs — not a big streamer such as Apple, Netflix, or Amazon Prime Video — could be big players for distribution rights in a novel way.

"I think that baseball will do very well having groups like the YES Network and NESN —  the Yankees, the Red Sox — and there are others like the Cubs and L.A. and other cities, you know, anchor what ultimately will be a centralized media company, frankly, that broadcasts all the games," Cardinale said.

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Given RedBird's minority stake in YES, perhaps there's a bit of hope mixed with educated speculation in Cardinale's prediction. But it's a prediction that merits attention. Few, if any, can will a monopolistic media conglomerate into existence. And even Cardinale admits there will be bumps along the way if he is proven correct.

"There's going to be, you know, different viewpoints amongst the teams," he told Sherman. "The challenge baseball always has is there's a subtle tension between the big markets and the small markets. They both need each other.

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"The punch line is, you'll see a comprehensive restructuring of the economics around baseball in total," Cardinale continued. "And part of that will be the media rights and the way it's distributed, part of it's going to be revenue sharing, part of it's going to be, you know, the relationship with the players. And everybody needs to Venn diagram themselves and have a seat at the table in figuring this out together. That's the story of the new world."

Given the mountain of important issues bearing on players and owners as the Dec. 1, 2026 expiration date of baseball's Collective Bargaining Agreement approaches, don't expect a swift resolution to the next round of CBA talks.

That was true before Cardinale postulated the existence of a "centralized media company" with the biggest-market RSNs holding the cards. Now, it feels as if there might be even more work to do when it comes to negotiating a game-changing distribution model into existence.

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