One of these days, ESPN will buy NFL Media.
The deal has been in the works for months. Last May, it was close to being done. And then it wasn’t. Negotiations finally resumed in February.
Now, Andrew Marchand of TheAthletic.com (via Brandon Contes of AwfulAnnouncing.com) reports that the deal is progressing.
“There is optimism on both sides,” Marchand said on his podcast. “Nothing is completed as of yet. If you’re ESPN, you want to do that deal because you have your direct-to-consumer. Fantasy is a big aspect of it. They could be the official home of fantasy football, which you can put that NFL logo on everything, and that helps you.”
The key is this. The people who run the show want to dump the asset.
“The NFL owners, they want to do this,” Marchand said. “They’ve been trying to unload NFL Media for a while it feels like a good thing for ESPN to have that further relationship with the NFL going forward.”
The league seemingly spent much of 2024 cutting costs at the in-house network, ditching an evening studio show for a much cheaper all-remote program and bizarrely moving a popular morning show from New York to L.A., where it starts each weekday at 5:00 a.m. local time.
Marchand previously reported that the deal will include a price tag in the range of $2 billion. Whatever the number, it’ll likely be more than the property is worth, because that’s the power the NFL has.
There’s a strategic reason for ESPN to overpay. It will cement the company’s status as a broadcast partner beyond 2029, when all deals will be up for bid — and when one of the existing networks that televise NFL games could find itself without a chair.