It started sneaking in commercials late last season. Maybe that was a sign. Though I think the NFL has been trying to get rid of the network for a while.

I don't begrudge working in an ad here and there. In fact I want them to if it means they keep it going. My fear has been that some short-sighted NFL executive will decide they can get more Sunday Ticket subscriptions if they axe it. ESPN seems even more likely to have that kind of dipshit logic. The reality is it's incredible for the NFL product. The "Witching Hour" feeds America a live stream of the best weekly drama anywhere in sports. This grows fandom, grows fantasy football, and bolsters the product. Always have executives out there that would rather kill the sheep once than sheer it a hundred times, though.

I'd imagine Disney is heavily leveraged right now. The bottom is falling out at ESPN and they're probably focused on trying to salvage investments and avoid the espn shout-ey show abyss. Like at this point I honestly think most professional athletes are embarrassed by the existence of ESPN and think of it as trash television that belittles their professions. Disney needs to buy up enough IPO to sell to their investors to offset what they've done to that network.

The NFL owners would be well advised not to go anywhere near Disney. Disney is ebola. Even their parks are bleeding, covid hurt, but they saw zero pent-up demand as expected in the post-covid year+. Their movies will lose BILLIONS before Iger strips the fields clean with his DEI locusts, and their streaming is losing subscribers...they are desperately clinging to their "sports" division, as it is one of their few ventures that hasn't completely gone tits up. If I were the NFL, I would shove that broomstick so far up their ass, they'd be cooking and cleaning at the same time.

Need to throw the book at people who are getting their sports from pirated streams. Passing the buck to the paying customer. ESPN would make more money without all of these piece of shit gen z stealing all media content they consume.

This smells like a desperation move for Disney.

Disney has lost almost half their market cap since March of 2021. Iger retired, his hand picked legacy CEO lasted like 18 months, the next dude lasted less time and the board convinced 800 year old Iger to ride back from the sunset and fix shit.

Since 2021 their properties have all shit the bed.
Marvel is a husk of its former self to the point at which they halted production
Star Wars has imploded to the point they shitcanned most of their shit.
Pixar hasn’t had a true hit in a long time
Studios is meh. I think it’s making money. But meh.
ESPN is puking money.
Discovery … still exists I guess?

Hulu is a good property
Parks and cruises make money.

Current liabilities exceed current assets by enough that id be pissed if it was mine, they still netted 2B last year, but they have problems.

I don’t think this is a healthy company entering into healthy M&A.

I think that would be a huge mistake for the NFL.

and here would come the HULU price hike...

Capitalism in a nutshell.

On the surface, I would say this is a bad idea. ESPN has been incredibly hit and miss for the past 20 years, going so far as to say much of their programming has turned into utter dogshit during this time. It would be a shame to see them have almost exclusive control over the NFL narrative, considering they already spend 90% of their time covering the NFL whether it's in-season or otherwise, and it's usually already pretty mediocre to bad. But it's Disney, and what the mouse wants, the mouse usually gets. So I'm sure it'll be under their umbrella eventually.

Do not want.

ESPN ruined ESPN. Stay away from my football. NFLN was great because I didn't have to watch ESPN any longer...