Roger Goodell sent a note to NFL Network employees Tuesday afternoon as the network prepares to formally become part of ESPN on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
ESPN reached an agreement to acquire NFL Network and the linear distrbutrion rights to RedZone<\/a> in August 2025, with the NFL taking a 10% equity stake in the Worldwide Leader in return. When the deal was announced, the prevailing assumption<\/a> was that regulatory approval would take between one and two years. Instead, federal regulators signed off in early February<\/a>, giving ESPN enough time to begin integrating NFL Media employees well before the start of the 2026-27 season, given that ESPN will air its first-ever Super Bowl<\/a> in February 2027.<\/p>\n In his note, which was obtained by Sports Business Journal<\/a>, Goodell credited the NFL Network staff with building something that outlasted the skeptics who doubted the network when it launched in 2003, calling out Total Access, Good Morning Football, NFL RedZone, Thursday Night Football, and the Scouting Combine and Schedule Release as hallmarks of what the network built over two decades.<\/p>\n \u201cIn 2003, we had an idea,\u201d Goodell wrote. \u201cMany skeptics doubted there was demand for a network featuring round-the-clock, yearlong NFL news, information, and analysis. But we knew our fans. We knew if we built it, they would come. The team at NFL Network has accomplished something remarkable over the past two decades\u2026 It is no surprise that the fruits of your labor would be attractive to an industry leader like ESPN as they look to serve the insatiable appetites of NFL fans.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo tomorrow begins a new chapter for NFL Media, NFL Network and many of you. To those remaining with NFL Media to evolve our key fan-facing platforms \u2014 from our website, apps and content productions across YouTube, FAST and podcasts, to NFL RedZone \u2014 please know how much we appreciate you. You will lead NFL Media into this next chapter. To those heading to ESPN, we offer a heartfelt thank you. We have no doubt that you will continue to drive unparalleled coverage of the NFL. And whether you are transitioning or staying, each of you will keep contributing to our greater football story, building on the relationships, sacrifice and teamwork that made this moment possible.\u201d<\/p>\n No immediate talent announcements are expected on Wednesday, though some well-known NFL Network names have already signed deals to stay on board, according to SBJ\u2019s Austin Karp, who reports there will be a noticeable amount of crossover of talent and content between the two networks. That\u2019s a much more optimistic framing than what was circulating closer to the deal\u2019s closing. Front Office Sports\u00a0reported in early March<\/a> that morale was \u201cplummeting\u201d at NFL Media, with some senior staffers described as being in \u201cpanic mode\u201d about what ESPN\u2019s takeover would mean for their futures.<\/p>\n ESPN has said it will evaluate new employees when their current contracts expire, so those answers will be coming sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Roger Goodell sent a note to NFL Network employees Tuesday afternoon as the network prepares to formally become…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,6,26300,126,1902],"class_list":{"0":"post-846369","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-nfl","10":"tag-nfl-media","11":"tag-nfl-network","12":"tag-roger-goodell"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116327657287934956","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}