The owners of the NFL have approved the milestone deal with Disney that will give the league a 10% stake in ESPN.
Under the multi-million dollar deal, the NFL will sell NFL Network and other NFL media assets to Disney in exchange for a 10% equity stake in the legacy sports network. While the deal has the sign-off of the NFL’s owners, NFL EVP of media distribution Hans Schroeder told reporters on Wednesday the deal has yet complete the necessary regulatory processes.
“There’s a number of steps in a transaction like this and a number of those steps we don’t control, so we’re going to do all that we can,” Schroeder said. “We’re going to cooperate, we’re going to partner, and in the meantime, we’re going to continue to run our business and work with all our partners as we always would. But certainly, when it does close, I think we’re really excited.”
Schroeder applauded the deal as “an opportunity for football fans to get more football in more places, more types of content.”
The NFL will regain control of four regular-season games that were previously aired on NFL Network. Also, “Monday Night Football” will no longer air on both ABC and ESPN at the same time. ESPN’s platforms would license an additional three NFL games per season to air on NFL Network and adjust its game schedule to have four games. The NFL Network will continue to present seven games per season.
“Today’s announcement paves the way for the world’s leading sports media brand and America’s most popular sport to deliver an even more compelling experience for NFL fans, in a way that only ESPN and Disney can,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said when the agreement was announced in August.
As part of the deal, ESPN will take control of the NFL Network, its linear RedZone Channel and NFL Fantasy. The league will continue to own and operate NFL Films, NFL+, NFL.com, the NFL Podcast Network, the NFL FAST channel and the official sites for the league’s 32 clubs. It will also continue to own, operate, and produce NFL RedZone and retain the rights to distribute NFL RedZone digitally.
Schroeder said he and NFL strategists do not yet know how ESPN and the NFL Network will be packaged for subscription in the future.
This deal represents a big boost to ESPN’s upcoming streaming service as NFL Network will be fully integrated into the service alongside traditional pay television distribution.
TheWrap’s Brian Lowry wrote in August that the deal “makes perfect sense.”
“ESPN cements its ties to the biggest attraction in sports in advance of future rights negotiations, and the NFL further diversifies its revenue stream while aligning itself with a savvy media partner to shepherd those holdings,” he wrote of the partnership. “Yet now that ESPN and the NFL are truly in bed together, can viewers trust the network to report negative stories about the league accurately and fairly?”
