Welcome to the sports media podcast. I'm your host, Richard Dyche. My producer is Patrick Antonetti.

I would call this an emergency podcast or a mini pod, however you want to call it.

And let me say at the top, I am away from our usual studio setup.

Did not expect to have to tape.

So my apologies in advance.

This will probably sound like I'm on the phone with my guest, but I wanted to get

something in because of the obvious significance of the ESPN news, which in the NFL, which we

will get to in a second. So apologies for the sound quality. It'll be back to the usual sound quality

for the next podcast, but I figured it's worth doing and then

hopefully people can, uh, can live with the, you know, the, the lower quality sound on,

on this one, which, which, which, which will be a one off. With that, I bring in one of the

regulars of this podcast, John Lewis, founder and editor of

Sports Media Watch, and we will talk about the significant, and do I mean significant week,

that ESPN has had. I think by now you've probably read that the NFL has taken a 10% stake

in ESPN.

And to give you the parameters of the deal,

at least as short as possible,

ESPN acquires the NFL network,

substantial rights to red zone, other content assets in exchange for the NFL

getting a 10% ownership stake in ESPN.

And with that, I bring in John Lewis.

John, welcome.

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