Football fans who want to watch every Monday night game will have to subscribe to a cable-like service for the privilege this year.
The Walt Disney Company intends to simulcast fewer “Monday Night Football” games on ABC, relegating most games to ESPN on an exclusive basis, according to a report from esteemed sports journalist John Ourand.
Last year, Disney decided to place more Monday Night Football games on ABC in order to offset the availability of fewer scripted and reality-based programming due to twin Hollywood strikes that ground television production to a halt.
Prior to the strikes, Disney said it would simulcast around five Monday Night Football games between ESPN and ABC. Another two games were set to broadcast exclusively on ABC while ESPN aired another game under the same Monday Night Football banner.
The number of games simulcast between the two networks was eventually increased to 15 as Disney executives sought to pad its fall prime-time schedule due to the writers and actors strikes.
Those strikes ended months ago, and production has ramped up accordingly. Now, Disney executives are looking to simulcast no more than six games between ESPN and ABC, with the broadcast network set to get another three games that won’t be on ESPN at all, according to Ourand.
The end result is that football fans who want access to all Monday Night Football games will have to pay for the privilege this year. One possible option is a forthcoming streaming service that Disney is developing with Fox Corporation and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) that will include ABC, ESPN, Fox and TNT. The service, internally called “Raptor,” is expected to launch in time for the start of football season (assuming a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit brought by Fubo doesn’t issue an injunction that prevents the service from launching by then).
Other streaming-based options include Sling TV, YouTube TV, Fubo, DirecTV Stream and Hulu with Live TV, all of which offer ESPN in their base programming packages. Of those options, Sling TV is the cheapest, costing around $40 per month for the “Sling Orange” package that includes ESPN and a handful of other Disney-owned networks.
