Picture a referee walking onto the field not just to call the game, but holding a 10% stake in the franchise he’s supposed to be officiating, almost like Tom Brady interviewing players on the sidelines at a Las Vegas Raiders game. That’s essentially where ESPN stands today. One of its longest-serving voices, Chris Berman, isn’t pretending the optics are clean.

“The lines have been blurred,” Berman said, “in a lot of ways.”

Berman, who anchored NFL Primetime for two decades and has been with ESPN for 47 years, doesn’t sugarcoat it. In conversation with CNBC Sports’ Alex Sherman, he acknowledged the strangeness of the NFL now owning a piece of an outlet that covers it.

Back in August 2025, ESPN and the NFL announced the most consequential sports media deal in recent memory. The NFL handed over NFL Network, NFL RedZone, and NFL Fantasy. In exchange, it took a 10% equity stake in the Worldwide Leader.

The deal officially closed January 31, 2026 (sooner than many expected). Now, integration is underway ahead of the 2026-27 season, which will end with ESPN hosting its first-ever Super Bowl.

News served to you like never before!

Prefer us on Google, To get latest news on feed

Prefer Us on Google

But does this 10% stake now alter the way ESPN covers the sport? Many have already raised concerns about it, including former sports executive David Samson.

“Do you think ESPN is going to spend hours of programming each day criticizing the NFL, bringing Jerry Jones to task?” Samson dropped the question on Nothing Personal with David Samson last year. “Do you think that there’s a possibility that ESPN will do anything to upset its partner, the NFL? And you talk about a conflict of interest.”

No major North American league has even taken an equity stake in a broadcaster airing its games. A former ESPN executive went even further, writing that the network had sold its soul to the league. But Chris Berman isn’t alarmed.

“Ten percent, what does that mean? I don’t think the NFL – ‘OK, if we’re gonna own 10%, here’s the handbook,” Berman noted. “Here’s the three pages that thou shalt not, thou shalt. I don’t think that happens. And if it did, I’d be really disappointed in the league as much as I am our place for agreeing. But that’s not the way it goes.”

ESPN president James Pitaro and NFL Commissioner Goodell have both addressed the conflict-of-interest concerns publicly. Interestingly, the NFL didn’t enter this deal as a passive investor. While the independence debate still simmers around ESPN, the league has already moved on to its next big move.

YouTube emerges as a leading name

The NFL seems to have deliberately kept four international games off the ESPN table. These will now be available to the highest bidder.

According to Sports Business Journal’s Austin Karp and Ben Fischer, YouTube is the early leader for that four-game package. Sources describe “lots of inbound” calls to the league, but YouTube has hard evidence to support its case.

YouTube has already streamed its first exclusive regular-season NFL game in 2025. The Week 1 matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Los Angeles Chargers drew around 18 million U.S. viewers alongside approximately 1.1 million international viewers.

That number reflects what YouTube genuinely brings to the table: a scale that no traditional broadcaster can match. With close to three billion monthly active users globally, YouTube offers the NFL a distribution channel that reaches viewers who have never even paid for a cable package.

The NFL retained these four international games as a standalone asset precisely because international rights are becoming one of the most valuable commodities in sports media

Additionally, YouTube’s existing relationship with the league gives it a structural advantage in negotiations. November 2025 saw a multi-year distribution deal with Disney that restored ESPN to YouTubeTV.  

If this latest deal closes, it will be the NFL’s strongest push yet towards building a global media footprint. The kind where distribution is flexible, borderless, and no longer dependent on a single partner, not even one that now holds 10% equity in ESPN.