NFL Network’s first Super Bowl is an ESPN stats feed, and the NFL owns 10% of ESPN

NFL Network will air a live Super Bowl for the first time in its 23-year history in February, as one of four English-language telecasts ESPN is producing of the game. ESPN said Sunday that the channel, which it now owns, will carry a Next Gen Stats telecast of Super Bowl LXI built on the league’s player tracking data, Awful Announcing reports.

It’s ESPN’s first Super Bowl, and the network is using nearly every channel it has. Joe Buck and Troy Aikman call the traditional telecast on ESPN and ABC. Peyton and Eli Manning’s ManningCast, an alternate telecast built around the brothers’ commentary, gets ESPN2. Pat McAfee’s Field Pass, called from the field, goes to ESPNU. Field Pass starts its regular-season run Oct. 19 on ESPN2, in weeks the ManningCast is off.

The stats version, which Variety says is called “Playbook,” goes to NFL Network. ESPN Deportes and Disney+ get a Spanish-language telecast.

That stats telecast overlays real-time probabilities on the field: whether the play is a run or a pass, whether the defense blitzes, which receiver gets targeted. It debuted in Week 16 last season and works like Prime Video’s Prime Vision feed on Thursday nights. Nine regular-season versions air alongside Monday Night Football on NFL Network, starting this Monday with Bills-Rams.

NFL Network belongs to ESPN because of a deal that closed in February. ESPN acquired NFL Network, NFL Fantasy and the rights to distribute RedZone, the channel that jumps between live games on Sunday afternoons, to cable and satellite providers. It paid the league with 10% of ESPN.

NFL employees, including on-air talent, started moving to ESPN in April, and NFL Network is being folded into ESPN’s stand-alone streaming service over the course of 2026. ESPN handles RedZone’s pay-TV distribution starting this season, while the NFL keeps selling it directly through the premium tier of NFL+.

Disney estimated the NFL’s stake at $3 billion in an SEC filing, which puts all of ESPN at about $30 billion, Deadline reported. Hearst owns 18% and Disney the rest. Disney said “a significant portion” of the deal’s value is deferred until late in its 2033 fiscal year, ahead of a window the following year when the two sides could renegotiate the stake.

Trace NFL Network’s first Super Bowl back and every input leads to the league: its tracking data, its former channel, its game, and a producer it now partly owns.

A rights deal pays a league for the game. An equity stake pays it when the buyer finds more ways to sell the game, and ESPN is selling Super Bowl LXI four ways in English alone, to traditional viewers, Manning fans, McAfee’s audience and people who want the probabilities on screen.

Each of those is a bet that one game can hold several separate audiences at once, and the NFL now owns part of the company placing it.

The only ESPN-owned TV networks with no Super Bowl programming planned so far are ESPNews, SEC Network and ACC Network.

Sources

• Awful Announcing: ESPN reveals full altcast plans for Super Bowl LXI
• Variety: Disney Broadens Super Bowl LXI Plans With Pat McAfee, Next-Gen Stats
• Deadline: NFL And ESPN Close Deal Sending NFL Network, Other Media Assets To ESPN