October 17, 200620 yr Turner, MLB Expected to Announce Rights Deal for Remaining Playoff Games John Consoli OCTOBER 17, 2006 - Major League Baseball and Turner Sports are expected to officially announce at a 4 p.m. media conference call today that they have reached a deal for Turner to acquire the TV rights to the remaining American League and National League Championship Series games each year from 2007-2013. All other post-game series were previously awarded in earlier deals. No dollar figure was available, although sources said amounts being discussed were in the $45-$50 million range for the seven games. MLB initially was seeking as much as $70 million for the package. Fox has the rights to the other League Championship Series games in those years. Fox had said it would be interested in the remaining ALCS and NLCS games, as did ESPN, but both, with significant amounts of MLB under new deals already, were not willing to pay what they felt was too high a price. Turner had also said it would only do a deal if the price was right. Comcast's Versus cable network was also interested in the post-season games. Previously, Turner won TV rights to the MLB post-season Divisional League Series and also a new Sunday afternoon MLB package. Earlier this year, MLB had also mentioned that it might also want to co-produce with a network a nightly baseball results show, similar to Baseball Tonight on ESPN. It is not known if that is part of this new package with Turner.
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