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Cardinals strike $1-billion TV deal with FOX Sports

Photo by Scott Rovak-US PRESSWIRE

The St. Louis Cardinals have reached an agreement with FOX Sports Midwest on a massive new broadcast deal that's expected to guarantee the club more than $1 billion in additional revenue.

Cardinals officials confirmed Thursday that the 15-year deal also secures the club minority stake in the media network, which will televise as many as 150 regular-season games.

"This does give us a great deal of stability over the next 15 years and does so in a market that has been shifting," Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. said, as reported by Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "It has a nice increase in rights fees as well as the equity component and as a whole it will allow us to remain as competitive as we have been with our payroll, with our spending in the international markets, with our activity in amateur markets and other ways we have invested in development. We have certainty going forward."

The new broadcast agreement will run from 2018-32, replacing the current deal set to expire at the end of the season.

Cardinals games are the highest-rated prime-time programming in St. Louis during the baseball season, and the local ratings ranked first among all Major League Baseball teams in 2014. This season, only the Kansas City Royals have higher local ratings.

Local rights packages in baseball have skyrocketed in value as live-event programming has become increasingly popular among viewers and advertisers.

- With files from The Associated Press

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