Coming to an App Near You: Everything.

ESPN just skinned the NFL

Thanks for being here. We hope you’ll stay.

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It is always fascinating to see the NFL admit that it isn’t good at something, since the league absolutely despises doing that. It still won’t come clean on steroids, it won’t admit that its drug-testing system was for years filled with holes, it claimed more than once that it was handling its domestic violence issues and team-cheating issues and Deflategate and — you get the idea. The NFL tries to place itself above reproach, fails, and then keeps on doubling down.

But in making official its new relationship with ESPN, the league has made at least a low-level admission of mediocrity: It isn’t terrific at programming almost anything that is not an actual game.

This is a complex deal, but the short of it is that ESPN will take over the NFL Network, starting as soon as final approval kicks in later this year. ESPN is also gaining control of NFL Fantasy, and — significantly — the linear rights to the NFL’s RedZone channel, meaning ESPN will control and profit from its distribution on traditional TV, like cable systems.

RedZone, for those who don’t know, is a game-day production that does nothing but highlight what happens in games when teams get into the red zone — that is, inside their opponent’s 20-yard-line. It is an entire day’s worth of broadcasting built around “somebody’s about to score or screw up.” This is the preferred viewing destination of fantasy players, full-blown gamblers, football fans with the attention span of a goldfish, and those who don’t care who wins. It’s awesome.

The NFL was good at that, which explains why ESPN wanted it. There’s also a larger context at work here, which we’ll explain in a moment. For now, just know that the other side of the deal is that the NFL is retaining some key properties while also taking a 10% equity stake in ESPN that is worth billions of dollars — and rising, probably, considering how much more NFL-related programming ESPN is about to offer.

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Here’s why ESPN/Disney was willing to sign away 10% of its entire business: It is edging out of the traditional broadcasting model and toward content on demand — and it is doing so in a major way.

Later this year, it will debut its stand-alone app, which after months of research it carefully named “ESPN.” For $30 a month, sports junkies will now be able to download and stream everything ESPN is, has and does: the main network, ESPN2, ESPN News, Deportes, SEC Network, ACC Network, the Ocho, I assume, etc.

It’s just a cannon-blast of sports programming, all streaming to wherever you want to receive it. And now, right at the heart of it, is the NFL Network. You’ll be able to get all the sports and gambling stuff you can possibly handle on a single app, without traditional distractions such as, I don’t know, news or current events of any kind. You can remain locked inside your sports bubble for as long as you’d like, including forever (or until ESPN goes away). Thirty bucks. Pay up.

The league had the right idea with the NFL Network, but it never quite pulled off making it special, and it never really rivaled ESPN, which never stopped pumping the NFL to death. Andrew Marchand of The Athletic reported last week that ESPN is going to devote heavy resources to NFL Network to improve the programming and brand it in the ESPN way, which you can assume means they’ll be using a lot of their existing talent on the football network right away.

The NFL isn’t merely walking away with a fat equity share. It kept all the digital rights to RedZone, which it will still own and produce. (ESPN get the right to use the name for other sports, though, so expect a College GameDay RedZone any minute.) And the league retained the rights to NFL.com and each of the 32 teams’ individual websites — content that the league does do well.

I’ve never accused this league of being stupid, only arrogant. Generally speaking, the NFL doesn’t do many losing deals. In this case, both parties get some great value — not that we as sports fans care about that. We care only about ourselves as fans.

The question now is whether we’re $30 a month worth of sold out, even though we can still get ESPN tucked within traditional cable systems, streamers like YouTube TV and Hulu. Or maybe we just want to watch some games and then hit Apple TV+ for the rest of the night? Goodbye, real world. We’ll check in from time to time.

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