NFL commissioner Roger Goodell addressed ESPN employees in a recorded conversation during their company-wide town-hall meeting Wednesday, sources told Front Office Sports. ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro also walked staffers through the details of the NFL equity deal and new WWE rights partnership.

The move has precedent. ESPN has brought in rights partners before to participate in town hall meetings on its corporate campus in Bristol, Conn.

Last week, ESPN announced it was acquiring NFL Network and various other assets, including the trademark for the NFL’s Red Zone branding and the NFL’s fantasy football platform. In return, the NFL will receive a 10% equity stake in ESPN. The NFL’s equity stake in ESPN has been estimated at $2.5 billion.

During the town hall meeting, Goodell expressed excitement about the partnership and the potential for ESPN’s forthcoming direct-to-consumer app, one source said.

There has been chatter in media circles that the relationship would erode ESPN’s journalistic independence. Goodell emphasized to ESPN employees that the league would not get involved in the network’s journalism, a source said.

In addition to Goodell, WWE chief content officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque also communicated with ESPN employees at the town hall via live video conference. Last week, ESPN announced WWE’s premium live events, including WrestleMania, will air live on the direct-to-consumer app beginning in 2026. ESPN’s deal with WWE is reportedly worth $325 million a year.

An ESPN spokesperson declined to comment.

In 2006, CBS Sports completely eliminated sideline reporters from its NFL game telecasts, then operated without them until hiring Tracy Wolfson as lead game reporter in 2014. Fast-forward a decade, and things are looking up for sideline reporters, whose job was once much-maligned. This key position, which has been the springboard for so many sports media careers, is finally having a moment.

Wolfson has earned two Emmy Awards and counting for CBS. Her CBS colleagues Jim Nantz and Tony Romo tell me she’s an indispensable part of their lead NFL game crew. 

Nantz has worked with Wolfson on huge TV properties such as the Super Bowl and the NCAA March Madness basketball championship. “She’s a true professional,” says Nantz. “At times, I’m blown away. I think I have uncovered every gem and nugget, and read everything that’s out there around the league, and she still comes up with stuff where I’m like, ‘Whoa, where did you get that? That’s really good.’ I have a world of respect for her. We have really good team chemistry.” 

Romo told me he’s delighted Wolfson is getting her due. She deserves more Sports Emmys, according to the former Cowboys quarterback. What TV viewers don’t see is all of the information she tells her colleagues in the broadcast booth, without adding it to her on-air hits. 

“She gives us stuff from the sideline that you might want to say. I don’t know. I haven’t been anywhere else. But this is what normal teams do. Everyone says that,” Romo said. “I think that shows her commitment to we—and us.”

Meanwhile, there’s been a flurry of sideline reporter hires by ESPN, NBC Sports, and Amazon Prime Video as they ramp up their NFL and NBA coverage. ESPN has promoted NFL Live host Laura Rutledge to serve as the second sideline reporter on its lead Monday Night Football team with Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, and incumbent reporter Lisa Salters (who also got a contract extension).

The network is also adding Peter Schrager and Katie George as sideline reporters to its second MNF announce team with Chris Fowler, Dan Orlovsky, and Louis Riddick. So for the first time ever, ESPN will deploy two sideline reporters for all 25 NFL on ESPN game telecasts this season.

Fox Sports was already ahead of the game in this respect, deploying two sideline reporters—Erin Andrews and Tom Rinaldi—on its first-string NFL broadcast team with Kevin Burkhardt, Tom Brady, and rules analyst Mike Pereira.

Both NBC and Prime have been on a hiring spree for top “courtside” reporters as they prepare to cover the NBA this fall. NBC has recruited Zora Stephenson, Jordan Cornette, and Ashley ShahAhmadi, while Prime is adding Cassidy Hubbarth, Allie Clifton, and Kristina Pink.

There are other factors at work here, too. Networks realize sideline reporters can bring younger, more digitally friendly audiences to game telecasts. Andrews, for example, boasts more than 5 million social media followers. She’s also a force in pop culture, cohosting ABC’s Dancing with the Stars for five years and marketing her own WEAR clothing line. Their diverse skill sets also lead to other audiences: Rinaldi, a skilled essayist, authored the best-selling book, The Red Bandanna: A Life, A Choice, A Legacy about slain Sept. 11 hero Welles Crowther.

There’s always going to be a segment of sports TV viewers who believe sideline reporters add little to nothing to game telecasts. We’ve all sat through games where control-freak coaches answered their questions monosyllabically and without insight. Fox’s Charissa Thompson had to do some fast talking after saying she made up some sideline reporting earlier in her career.

But occasionally, there are unforgettable TV moments like Maria Taylor’s interview with an angry Nick Saban, Andrews with Richard Sherman, or Sal Paolantonio with Bart Scott, where they go viral. And the behind-the-scenes work reporters do is invaluable. If the sports TV networks have their way, we should be getting a lot more of them this season.

NEW YORK — Take the two biggest television draws in the NFL. Schedule their game on Thanksgiving Day. Add in millions of viewers, relaxed after substantial servings of turkey. Put them all together, and you could be looking at the most-watched regular-season telecast in the NFL’s 104-year history.  

That was the word from CBS Sports president and CEO David Berson when talking about his network’s Chiefs at Cowboys Thanksgiving telecast during an NFL preview event Tuesday. 

While Berson declined to make a specific prediction, he noted Patrick Mahomes’s Chiefs and Dak Prescott’s Cowboys are the league’s “two biggest viewership drivers.” They’ll clash in what’s annually the league’s most-watched window of the year: the late-afternoon Thanksgiving game. 

At 42 million viewers, the Fox Sports telecast of Cowboys-Giants on Thanksgiving Day of 2022 holds the current record as the most-watched regular-season game. That game eclipsed the longtime record holder: an ABC Sports Monday Night Football clash between the Giants and 49ers on Dec. 3, 1990.

CBS has been touting the Chiefs-Cowboys matchup since the NFL’s spring schedule release. The pinned post of the NFL on CBS X/Twitter account shows Mahomes, Prescott, and Travis Kelce while promising a “Thanksgiving feast.”

Other highlights from the CBS NFL presser:

• Berson is thrilled CBS also landed Chiefs at Bills on Nov. 2. Kansas City vs. Buffalo has “become the biggest rivalry” in the league, he said. “Every network wanted that game. We’ve been telling that story. We’re thrilled to continue telling that story.” In January, the CBS telecast of the Chiefs’ dramatic 32–29 win over the Bills was the most-watched AFC championship game in history, averaging 57 million viewers.  
• As the primary TV home of the AFC, CBS televises many games featuring top QBs such as Mahomes, Josh Allen of the Bills, Lamar Jackson of the Ravens, Joe Burrow of the Bengals, and Aaron Rodgers of the Steelers. “We have far more games with the Chiefs and Bills and Steelers and Ravens than any other network,” Berson noted. “Up to nine Chiefs and Bills games. Two or three times any other rights holder.”

Berson confirmed to FOS that the NFL now holds an equity stake in CBS parent company Paramount Global as a result of the $8 billion Skydance-Paramount merger. That gives the NFL part ownership in two media-rights partners: CBS and ESPN. “The NFL now is a shareholder of our company,” he said.