ESPN and the NFL have found a means of combining the league’s media content with the outlet’s soon-to-launch streamer before the sides receive regulatory approval from the federal government for their recently struck mega-deal.
While NFL Network will eventually become part of ESPN’s standard offering once its deal with the league closes (a process that will likely take a year or more), the channel will be made available to customers who choose to bundle ESPN’s direct-to-consumer product with NFL+ Premium, the league’s direct-to-consumer offering that includes NFL Network and RedZone. The bundle will launch on September 3, one day before the NFL season kicks off.
The combined offering will run customers $39.99 per month, $10 more than the standalone price of ESPN, but a $5 monthly savings compared to purchasing ESPN and NFL+ Premium a la carte, according to a report by Rob Schaefer in Sports Business Journal. It is the third confirmed bundle to include ESPN’s forthcoming direct-to-consumer product, joining an ESPN/Fox One bundle and an ESPN/Disney+/Hulu bundle.
The terms of this deal are similar to those of the Fox One bundle; the NFL’s content will not be directly integrated into the ESPN app. Rather, folks who subscribe to the bundle will have access to both streaming services but will still need to launch each app to view the content located within. When/if the ESPN-NFL deal closes, the NFL Network would become integrated into the ESPN app as an ESPN-owned channel, while RedZone would still require and additional subscription to be accessed digitally as ESPN has only acquired linear rights to the channel.
In the interim, this is a pretty decent workaround for individuals who would like to access both ESPN and the NFL’s media properties in a streaming setting. However, it’s still far from ideal when it comes to accessing multiple different properties within a single platform.