On Tuesday, the league announced that it will sell NFL Network to ESPN, allowing ESPN to distribute NFL RedZone to pay-television operators and combine NFL Fantasy Football with ESPN Fantasy Football.
In exchange, the NFL will take a 10 percent equity stake in ESPN.
The NFL Network’s Judy Battista spoke with Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who is the chairman of the league’s media committee, about the pending deal.
“I think we’ve hooked up with the best partners we can have,” Kraft said in the interview. “That will help expose us to more homes, more of an international audience. Strategically, we have to grow our salary cap and can only do that by — if we want to keep labor peace, we have to grow our audience. This transaction helps us to do that.”
The deal still requires approval from team owners – considered a slam dunk – and federal regulators.
Until the deal closes, however, fans won’t see any significant changes to ESPN or NFL Network. But completion of the deal, which could take months, is expected to bring more NFL programming to more people.
“They’re people we have confidence in,” Kraft said. “This is a way for us to broaden our audience. We’ve done so much. I don’t think there’s any company like Disney and ESPN in doing sports, all sports. We need to expose our product to more people and a greater variety of people.
“We’re hooking up with the strongest sports amalgamation of sports product. We’re giving them what I believe is the best content, and they’re giving us the greatest operational company to grow our audience globally.”
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