ESPN signed a new agreement with Major League Baseball to make teams even richer:

ESPN has inked an eight-year deal with MLB worth $5.6 billion, according to the Sports Business Journal. The astronomical numbers work out to roughly $700 million per year. If that number seems large – the current deal works out to roughly $306 million per year – it is by design: ESPN absolutely needed to overpay for MLB rights to keep all (or even some) their games from going to NBC.

That money gets divided evenly among the teams, so that’s about 23 million per team per year, or a superstar contract. As the article points out, the national, over the air broadcasts are still up for grabs. That’s on top of all the money teams are pulling as local advertisers flock to sporting events, and MLBAM keeps the cash flowing. It’s a reason the Dodgers were able to trade for all those Red Sox contracts, and why Boston may be able to rebuild very quickly. Be prepared to be shocked by the amount of money teams start paying for free agents. Everyone is rich again, like in the early 1990s.