The NFL is advanced talks with The Walt Disney Co. to buy an equity stake in ESPN, the New York Post reports.
Citing unnamed sources, the paper’s Andrew Marchand writes that under an arrangement being considered by the league and the cable sports giant's parent company, ESPN would also take over operational control of NFL Media, which includes the NFL Network and NFL Red Zone.
Marchand said that while an NFL-ESPN alliance has been pitched before, this is the first time it's advanced to the point at which National Football League owners and the league Players Association have been informed about it.
The NFL's collective bargaining agreement would require both owners and players to be involved in the deal.
Neither the league nor ESPN have commented yet.
As several national sports media pubs reported last week, the NFL controlled all 10 of the most-watched programming events on television last year, and 93 of the top 100.
So it makes sense that the league might look to cut out the middleman and reach its audience more directly.
ESPN and Disney, meanwhile, are grappling with an eroding pay TV ecosystem. The media company has plans to launch a direct-to-consumer version of ESPN next year.
