Major League Baseball just made some major league money.
With the announcement of an eight-year deal with Fox and TBS — combined with a recent deal with ESPN (owned by WaltDisney) — MLB basically will double its television revenue.
Fox, whose parent company is Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., will pay more than $500 million a year. It retains rights to the World Series and All-Star Games, and will add two Division Series in 2014. It will also double the number of regular-season games.
TBS (owned by Time Warner) pays $300 million a year for a League Championship series, two divisional series, and one of the Wild Card games. MLB Network will also telecast two divisional games. (Read More: Louisville Slugger's Unlikely Home Run.)
If you add in the $700 million from ESPN, then it is $1.5 billion a year in domestic television revenue.
"These are big increases," said Commissioner Bud Selig on the conference call officially announcing the deals. “These increases will be split equally among the 30 teams — and with the bottom-line in 2014, it will be easier for the owners to be more profitable.”
"In 2014, [the teams] will get a huge increase," Selig said, when asked what the teams will do with the money. "Everyone will then determine not only what to do with the money, but how it will impact ticket prices etc..." (Read More: 10 Most Overpaid NBA Players.)
So, perhaps, this isn't quite the $4 billion plus annually that the National Football League will receive moving forward, but it's certainly affirmation that baseball is not exactly a sport that's fading from the national consciousness. (Read More: Bad NFL Call: A $1 Billion Mistake.)
"We've proven in the last 10 to 15 years that baseball is everything," Selig said. "The greatest manifestation of that is outside partners telling you how valuable it is."
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-By CNBC's Brian Shactman
@bshactman