David Rosenthal

Nobody should shed a tear for them.

Well, speaking of networks and media rights, one thing that we touched on briefly in the episode was that the NFL owned and operated its own cable network.

Sort of counter to their strategy.

Yeah, a little bit of strategy conflict there.

Well...

It looks like that strategy conflict is going to be resolved, I think, in a huge win way for the NFL.

So August 2025, the NFL reached a deal with Disney and ESPN to essentially sell the NFL's cable network, ESPN.

and the NFL's official fantasy app to ESPN for a 10% equity stake in all of ESPN in return for this swap.

This is awesome for all sides, assuming this deal goes through.

It's in regulatory review right now.

I think this deal is awesome, assuming it goes through.

The NFL, like we're saying, realized they don't really want to be in the business of operating a linear TV channel.

This is just pure, like, non-strategic overhead costs that they're offloading.

Similarly, though, it's not like Disney and ESPN are just taking this off their hands as a favor.

They also know that they need to shift out of the linear cable TV business.

And so the timing of this coincided right with launching the full ESPN direct consumer over the top streaming service, ESPN Unlimited.

Yeah, it was like a neutered version of ESPN.

Yeah, no SportsCenter, no live NFL games, blah, blah, blah, no Monday Night Football.

Yeah.

So this is now like a whole dumping all of the NFL media rights for some games, but also all of this ancillary content and NFL films content.