Posted on 08/06/2025 10:18:29 AM PDT by V_TWIN
ESPN is acquiring the NFL Network and other National Football League media assets, including the linear rights to the league's popular RedZone channel, in a deal that will see the NFL get a 10% equity stake in the all-sports network, it was announced Tuesday night.
ESPN will also acquire the NFL's fantasy product and merge it into its existing platform, making ESPN Fantasy Football the official game of the NFL. In a separate deal, the NFL also agreed to license to ESPN other NFL content and intellectual property that will appear on the NFL Network and other assets.
The NFL Network will be owned and operated by ESPN, which will control the network's linear and digital rights. The NFL Network will be integrated into ESPN's upcoming direct-to-consumer streaming product, and it will continue to be available on traditional pay TV providers.
"By combining these NFL media assets with ESPN's reach and innovation, we're creating a premier destination for football fans," ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro said in a statement. "Together, ESPN and the NFL are redefining how fans engage with the game -- anytime, anywhere. This deal helps fuel ESPN's digital future, laying the foundation for an even more robust offering as we prepare to launch our new direct-to-consumer service."
(Excerpt) Read more at espn.com ...
Pssst. If you go to YouTube there are a lot of channels illegally streaming the games for free, they can’t catch them all.
Thanks for the tip.
That’s the 2 big guys. If you’re going by population size England wins. Most English cities have total stadium capacity of about 25% of the population. And 23 home games a year. Most American cities even if ALL the sports played home games at the same time you’re looking at 2 maybe 3% of the populations.
Good! At least I helped one FReeper save some bux!
Of course here in the US we have the high school football stadiums, that do rival some of the English soccer stadiums, especially here in Texas.
That’s a good point about percent of population
I’m going to do this: keep Spectrum thru Sep as MLB playoffs are on TBS TNT TRU channels. Switch to this ESPN IN Oct (world series on FOX anyway) then back to Spectrum or other for Match Madness (again on TBS TNT TRU). In between these times, everything else on Spectrim is s$&t anyway.
I’m going to do this: keep Spectrum thru Sep as MLB playoffs are on TBS TNT TRU channels. Switch to this ESPN IN Oct (world series on FOX anyway) then back to Spectrum or other for Match Madness (again on TBS TNT TRU). In between these times, everything else on Spectrum is s$&t anyway.
This sucks, big time. I purchase Red Zone with Sunday Ticket. I always watched it in multi-view screens with other games.
Now, Red Zone will just be on ESPN+, which I don’t buy and don’t want.
Yeah, high school football in the south east is probably as close as America comes to English sports madness.
It sounds like this is the first step to the other way around.
I’m pretty sure this is not effecting Sunday Ticket’s version of Redzone. Youtube still says it’s available.
Me I’m hoping the cable Redzone, the one I watch, moves to ESPN+ which I already have. Cause I stream at 4K but “only” cable at 1080. Jeeze how time changes, I remember when HD was brand new and awesome, now it’s behind the curve.
Its the Eastern Sports Propaganda Network
Yeah, when you look at how small the places are the stadiums become a lot bigger. Also there’s the whole “catchment zone” issue. Like yes the Tuscaloosa stadium can fit almost the entire city, but how far away do the draw fans from. Lambeau field has more capacity than the city of Green Bay, but the Packers’ catchment is basically all of Wisconsin. In England a lot of these stadiums are within site of each other, heck Liverpool has 2 60,000+ seat stadiums less than a mile apart, there’s more than 1 team within 20 miles of almost every team in the country. Their catchment zones are smaller than the average work commute.
Not saying 100,000 seat stadiums aren’t pretty spectacular. Just that it’s not the be all end all.
They can charge it $100 to show it through streaming (but still available OTA — rabbit ears).
so disney is buying the NFL network, to make it more woke and ruin football for everyone.. ESPN sucks
They’ve pretty much already destroyed college football.
lol. True. Things change fast. Once upon a time, I had a movable 10’ satellite dish that allowed me to get NFL Sunday Ticket for FREE! For about 3 years…. When they first came out.
I’m sure YouTube has Red Zone THIS year. I’ve already paid for it. But I expect it will no longer be an option next year. I hope I’m wrong. I HATE ESPN.
1Old Pro wrote: “Only a capitalist would consider overcharging by a monopoly an issue.”
Millions do not consider the NFL to be overcharging.
If you don’t like the offered price you can always watch WNBA.
I doubt it will change. Remember the important part for Red Zone being part of Sunday Ticket is Youtube’s contract with the NFL. They’re paying the NFL around $2 billion to offer Sunday Ticket and sell the package, and variations of it all of which are spelled out in the contract, to subscribers. If the NFL/ ESPN deal cut off some of those options, that would impeded Youtube’s ability to turn that $2b into profit. And I don’t think either ESPN or the NFL wanna mess with Google.
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