MLB’s 162-game regular season has long been a boon for teams selling summerlong tonnage to cable TV channels. As recently as 2022, 23% of MLB team revenues came from local media deals, nearly twice the percentage seen in the NBA or NHL. But the decline of regional sports networks has changed the math in baseball, which is now actively considering shortening its season.
MLB proposed returning to a 154-game slate in talks with the MLB Players Association on Thursday, the league announced, touting the benefits of a weekly off day for players and the potential to expand the playoffs’ Division Series round from best-of-five to best-of-seven battles. The changes would go into effect in 2029, when MLB is set to inaugurate new national TV deals.
Tickets still make up the plurality of MLB revenue, according to a previous Sportico analysis, but two-thirds of total team revenue today comes from other sources. Local media rights make up a shrinking percentage of that pie, declining from 23% of the average team’s revenue in 2022 to 17% in 2025. Some individual teams who have lost local TV deals reportedly faced $20 million revenue drops in related earnings as a result.
At the same time, MLB has expanded its national TV footprint.
This year, the league added NBC and Netflix as broadcasters while selling ESPN distribution rights for out-of-market games across the country. The biggest tech companies have so far shown much more interest in national (or international) events rather than market-by-market tonnage.
During the season, a weekly off day would also allow for the creation of a standalone Monday night game broadcast nationally, akin to Sunday Night Baseball. MLB has leaned into event-style games throughout the regular season, playing in historic venues and non-traditional sites to create unique in-person and television offerings.
Meanwhile, expanding the playoffs would allow for more postseason games played in the evenings rather than during the day.
“You make more from national games than you make from local games,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in February. “I want to get into a paradigm where I can maximize the amount of national revenue that I get.” He has also discussed the possibility of selling national and local rights to distributors in a single process.
MLS, the NFL, NHL and WNBA have all lengthened their regular seasons in the last 15 years. Practically no major league has shortened its regular season calendar on a permanent basis. MLB teams last exclusively played 154 games in 1960.
MLB also proposed allowing top seeds to select their opponents in the first two playoff rounds. Doing so would “create compelling storylines, intensify existing rivalries and create new ones,” MLB spokesman Glen Caplin said. It could also increase the stakes for regular-season contests that might shake up playoff seeding.
After shrinking the length of baseball games in a recent collection of rule changes, largely to fan acclaim, MLB is looking to perform a similar feat on a season-long level. But change appears a ways off.
“We are reviewing these materials, including the proposed changes to the playoff format,” the MLBPA said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the league once again made clear that all of its proposals are contingent on players’ agreement to a salary cap, a system that guts player rights and compensation, as well as its other anti-player proposals.”
