Baseball’s TV Contract Worth $1.7 Billion : Television: Five-year deal will earn each team $12 million per year. Comprehensive playoff coverage is promised.

Baseball’s five-year television agreement announced Monday will bring in $1.7 billion, which is considerably more than skeptics thought possible.

“This is another significant step in the recovery of our sport,” Bud Selig, acting commissioner, said at a news conference in New York. “We’ve had a lot of difficult days over the last 15 or 18 months.”

Fox, which will alternate the World Series with NBC and share in postseason coverage, will pay $575 million. NBC will contribute $400 million.

One surprise Monday was that ESPN has extended its agreement with baseball through 2000. Its current deal was to expire after the 1997 season and it had been reported that baseball was not extending it.

ESPN will pay $440 million to continue its regular-season coverage and also will share in the first round of the playoffs.

Ed Durso, ESPN’s executive vice president, said the extension was agreed to late in the negotiations but stopped short of calling it the “11th hour.”

ESPN’s involvement is significant because it means that postseason baseball will be on cable for the first time.

During the first round of the playoffs, Fox will have four prime-time telecasts and one Saturday afternoon telecast, NBC will have three prime-time telecasts, and ESPN will have the rest, a maximum of 12.

The new television agreement allows baseball to expand the first round from best-of-five to best-of-seven, but not before 1997.

Regional playoff telecasts this season deprived fans of seeing many of the games and caused a public outcry.

“Sometimes, in a perverse way, you have to go through some difficult times to get to the step that’s best for you,” Selig said. “That’s what happened in this situation.”

With Monday’s announcement, Liberty Media, whose parent company, Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), recently merged with Fox, becomes a new major player in sports broadcasting.

Liberty will pay $188 million for four years of regular-season baseball, which, beginning in 1997, will be carried on Liberty’s Prime Sports networks and Fox’s 17-month-old cable channel, fX.

The money from the four television entities adds up about about $1.6 billion, with another $100 million or so coming from international rights.

The $1.7 billion breaks down to about $12 million a season to each team, not quite the $15 million teams were making on a four-year, $1.057-billion CBS contract that expired after the 1993 season.

Through the Baseball Network, a partnership involving baseball, NBC and ABC, teams this year earned $6-7 million from national television revenues.

With television apparently now in order, baseball’s next big step is a labor agreement.

Among those attending Monday’s news conference was Donald Fehr, executive director of the players’ union, whom Selig thanked for attending. The two shook hands, chatted and smiled.

Later, Fehr said of the television deal, “It’s a very positive development. I don’t see how anyone would consider it otherwise. It’s a big vote of confidence for baseball from more than one TV network.

“Given the dire predictions [about baseball’s future], this should wake people up to the fact the sport still matters and is still going places.”

* Times staff writer Ross Newhan contributed to this story.

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Breakdown of Baseball’s TV Contract

FOX: $575 million

World Series: 1996, 1998, 2000. All-Star game: 1997, 1999. First-round playoffs: Five games, four in prime time and one on Saturday afternoon. League championship series: One each year. Regular season: A Saturday afternoon game of the week, with four games regionalized. It will start on Memorial Day weekend in 1996, and baseball has the option to move the start to opening weekend after that. A one-hour pregame show before each telecast, with 30 minutes devoted to children.

NBC: $400 million

World Series: 1997, 1999. All-Star game: 1996, 1998, 2000. First-round playoffs: Games not on Fox or ESPN, including three prime time telecasts. League championship series: One each year. Regular season: None.

ESPN: $440 million

First-round playoffs: Six to 12 games each year. (If two games are played simultaneously, one will be on ESPN2). West Coast games would probably start at 8 p.m. Regular season: Wednesday night doubleheader and Sunday night game each week.

LIBERTY MEDIA-FOX CABLE: $188 million

Regular season: Beginning in 1997, two games each week from among Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights on Prime Sports regional networks and Fox’s cable channel, fX.