John Kosner Spoke with Dan Kaplan of Awful Announcing About ESPN’s Signing of Jason Kelce
Original Article: Awful Announcing, by Daniel Kaplan, May 2nd, 2024
Jason Kelce signing shows no expense is too great for ESPN when it comes to the NFL
ESPN has spent tens of millions of dollars on Monday Night Football talent, even in an era of cost-cutting elsewhere.
First it was the eight-figure annual salaries for Troy Aikman and Joe Buck. Then there was the move of tabbing Scott Van Pelt to host the pregame show. Then the ManningCast added Bill Belichick as a regular guest. And now ESPN’s Monday Night Football has also won the scramble to snare Jason Kelce, the boisterous smiling former Philadelphia Eagles center and host with his brother Travis of a top rated podcast, New Heights.
“Jason has a chance to sort of be a breakthrough, especially if you imagine that at some point he’ll be paired with his brother,” said John Kosner, a media consultant. Travis Kelce has two years remaining on his recently reworked contract with the Kanas City Chiefs.
ESPN may be belt tightening in some areas but when it comes to MNF and everything before and after the game, no expense appears too high.
It wasn’t that long ago that critics savaged MNF for its talent (remember the ill-fated tenure of Jason Witten, and the mocked Booger Mobile) and for the quality of its games. No more. MNF may not exactly be leaving the other broadcasters in the rear view mirror–after all Tom Brady is scheduled to take over lead announcing duties at Fox; of course he might change his mind as he has done before – but the moves are certainly notable.
“I wonder whether this move (Kelce) by ESPN raises the pressure on some of the other broadcasters to do more to find other ways to innovate,” Kosner said. “Because they’re amassing at ESPN the best talent team. And this again, is the most popular sport in America.”
The other broadcasters have not all been quiet. CBS Sports made waves this week by going younger with its talent team, moving out Phil Simms and Boomer Esiason, and bringing in Matt Ryan to the studio show. Fox, again, is poised to add Brady as number one color commentator, and it has the long running number one ranked pregame show.
And ESPN after all is a different animal than its competitors. For one, ESPN fought for years for better games. Despite spending more in rights fees than any of the broadcasters, ESPN persistently had poor games. Paying through the nose for broadcast talent is seen in industry circles as a signal to the NFL, and advertisers, that ESPN is treating the NFL broadcast with utmost devotion and respect. And it has paid off by appearances. Since the new broadcast contracts that went into effect last season, ESPN’s games, which drew record ratings, were often blockbuster matchups. And the league even agreed to flex games to Monday night–it has not done so yet.
“ESPN wants the best games they can get and their schedule has gotten progressively better over the last few years, certainly since Jimmy Pitaro took over (ESPN),” Kosner said. “And, but I think that the real end game is to build viewership and tune in to other programming that they do around the NFL.”
Another reason for the all-in spend around MNF, unlike its competitors, ESPN has no non-sports businesses competing for resources. And the NFL is the biggest sport, so it is always going to invest in football.
“They got a lot more NFL programming hours than anybody else,” media consultant Patrick Crakes said. “They have to. Their return on investment could be diluted by that. So they don’t want that to happen. So they’re investing a lot.”
And Kosner said, “those networks are not really comparable to ESPN, because they’re not in the SportsCenter business. They’re not in the NFL Live business. And in certain cases, they haven’t added that much talent because they didn’t have to… none of them do the hours of content and programming.”
For those who snark the pregame shows, the announcers, the sideline reporters and so on don’t matter because fans just want the games, Crakes, and Kosner disagreed, arguing it is important the overall NFL product is presented as professionally and slickly as possible.
“They have to constantly think about how they’re presenting because their brand is largely dictated by it,” Crakes said. “When I was at Fox, even after we launched FS1, my consumer research group came back saying what had been being said forever: the entire brand of Fox Sports centered around the pregame show of the guys at the desk.”
Kosner didn’t disagree games are what fans value most, as evidenced by the rights fees paid to the NFL. “But from the standpoint of building a healthy network business, “ he added, “you would like to get people to tune in at all hours and sort of express their fandom that way.”
And the popular and rambunctious Kelce, who pounded beers in the parking lot and went shirtless at the Kansas City Chiefs-Buffalo Bills divisional round game in Buffalo, just might be must-watch TV.
