Tremors were felt down the spine of sports rights as news broke of the TV celebrity break-up between Major League Baseball (MLB) and ESPN—a result of the Disney-owned distributor requesting a controversial shake-up to its $550 million annual package. Spookily, this divorce came just days after our sister service Rethink TV published a brand spanking new Sports Rights Forecast—projecting the world’s top 17 sports leagues to generate $127.5 billion in revenue in 2030, growing steadily from $103.6 billion in 2025 (more on this later). So, after 35 years of sporting matrimony, MLB and ESPN have called it quits. What was initially billed as a mutual parting of ways, soon snowballed into a scandalous story about ESPN wanting to escape a…