Report: NFL wants ESPN to pay $3.5 billion per year for Monday Night Football rights, but ESPN is willing to pay $2.4 billion per year

NBC Sports

ESPN currently pays $2 billion a year for the rights to Monday Night Football, which is the most any network pays for NFL rights. But Sports Business Journal's John Ourand reports Disney initially asked for $3.5 billion per year to renew their rights deal for the next 10 years. According to ProFootballTalk's Mike Florio, "common sense suggests that the two sides will meet in the middle, possibly at $2.95 billion per year. If, after all, ESPN put $2.4 billion on the table knowing that ESPN wanted $3.5 billion, it could easily be argued that ESPN knew or should have known that the two numbers would set up a final agreement at the midpoint. But that’s hardly a hard-and-fast method for bridging a financial gap. ESPN may stop short of $2.95 billion, especially if no other network is ready to pilfer the rights to Monday nights. Then there’s the question of whether new Disney CEO Bob Chapek would walk away from NFL rights — and the question of whether Disney can make the NFL think that Chapek would."