The Wednesday morning announcement that the draft will continue to be televised by ESPN didn’t include any information about the duration of the deal.
According to Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal, it’s a five-year deal.
This means the contract runs through 2030 — which coincides with the expiration of the current broadcast deals, if/when (when) the NFL pulls the plug on all packages.
Per the report, the deal is non-exclusive. Which allows the NFL to sell rights to televise the draft to other networks.
It’s still not clear what will happen with the NFL Network coverage of the draft, now that ESPN will be running NFL Network. On one hand, it makes no business sense to duplicate production efforts. On the other hand, ESPN/ABC already have multiple productions for the draft.
To the extent that the league and the four-letter network have concerns about the potential ESPN-ification of NFL Network, the best move would be to preserve the existing NFLN broadcast of the draft. Even if it would be cheaper to fold them together and streamline the process.
