ESPN May Get More NFL Games - Bloomberg
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Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN, the most- watched sports channel is in partnership talks with the National Football League to carry more games, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions.
A deal may end the league’s carriage dispute with cable systems, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. NFL Network Chief Executive Officer Steve Bornstein has been meeting with Disney executives, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the discussions. Disney CEO Robert Iger and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell are also involved, the Journal said.
“They banked on the nation’s appetite for NFL programming being insatiable and that they could use that as leverage for the carriage they needed,” Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon, said in an interview. “Well, lesson learned.”
Under one scenario, ESPN would carry the eight regular season games scheduled by the league on ESPN Classic, the Journal reported. The NFL channel started in November 2003, airing highlights, interviews and the league’s annual draft.
In 2006, the network began broadcasting games on Thursday and Saturday nights.
Cable Spat
Disney fell 95 cents, or 2.9 percent, to $31.94 yesterday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. ESPN began airing Monday Night Football in 2006.
“We have a long-term and extensive relationship with the NFL,” Mike Soltys, a spokesman for Bristol, Connecticut-based ESPN, said today in a statement to Bloomberg News. Soltys declined to comment beyond the statement.
“We talk to ESPN on a wide range of issues,” NFL Network spokesman Dennis Johnson said in an interview. The NFL Network asked federal regulators last month to force Philadelphia-based Comcast Corp., the largest U.S. cable provider, to make the league’s channel more widely available.
Comcast carries its own sports networks on a basic tier of service that reaches more subscribers, while placing the NFL Network in a package that costs more, the NFL said in the filing with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
Regulatory Filing
Comcast has said the NFL agreed to have the network appear on a sports tier.
“The NFL’s complaint is a blatant example of regulatory gamesmanship,” Comcast said in filing yesterday with regulators. Swangard said a partnership between ESPN and the league makes sense.
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