Who says you can’t head home again?
The NY Post’s Andrew Marchand reports Skip Bayless considered returning to ESPN for a reunion with Stephen A. Smith before re-signing with FOX Sports, getting a four-year deal worth $32 million.
The duo would have done a daily ESPN+ show together, while being splashed everywhere ESPN, including weekly spots on the “Monday Night Football” halftime show. ... Smith, who makes on the brink of $8 million per annum, was a drive-in ESPN’s recruitment of Bayless. The long negotiations went over several months and didn't conclude until late fall. ... The impetus for the move wasn't to place the “First Take” band back together, but rather to bolster the network’s burgeoning new subscription platform, ESPN+.
Speaking of FOX Sports, it's negotiating a replacement deal for broadcast rights with the NFL, and Variety reports those talks to indicate a change for Thursday Night Football, consistent with CEO Lachlan Murdoch.
“We’re getting towards the top of this negotiation,” Murdoch said, noting that Fox and therefore the league were “still apart on a variety of issues.” When it involves a replacement agreement, he said, “the presumable scenario” is that Fox keeps its Sunday-afternoon NFL broadcast, and lets Thursday go.
Pro Football Talk reports Thursday Night Football “appears likely to be split between NFL Network and Amazon Prime, starting in 2023.” Pro Football Talk also reports negotiations for the Sunday Ticket are stalled.
The satellite and streaming deal for out-of-market games runs through 2021 or 2022 (the precise duration of the contract is one among the good mysteries in football). As noted by Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal, no negotiations have happened regarding the subsequent home of Sunday Ticket, a property held by DirecTV since its inception in 1994. It’s widely believed that Sunday Ticket will find yourself elsewhere. It remains possible that the satellite component will stick with DirecTV which the streaming portion will attend a replacement home. Some have suggested that ESPN+ will acquire it.
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