The Walt Disney Company recently announced its acquisition of Pat McAfee and his signature eponymous digital show on a multiyear, multi-million dollar contract at its Upfront event earlier this month. The value of that agreement is now being reported as five years and approximately $85 million, according to Andrew Marchand of the New York Post.
In a direct message exchange with the writer, McAfee only divulged the the value of the contract was an “interesting number.”
The agreement is reportedly similar to that of Peyton Manning and Omaha Productions, as The Pat McAfee Show will remain a presentation of Pat McAfee, Inc. and will give him full creative control over his show. This includes welcoming guests from other reporting outlets, such as Ian Rapoport of NFL Network and Shams Charania of The Athletic and Stadium among others.
ESPN will assist McAfee and his team with behind-the-scenes work, believing that it will achieve higher ratings and attract greater advertising revenue than the programs currently airing in the time slot – SportsCenter and This Just In, hosted by Max Kellerman. McAfee’s show will air for two hours a day, presumably on ESPN’s primary linear cable channel, while also streaming on ESPN+ and YouTube.
“Their production assets, league rights capabilities and access to everything in the sports world makes us incredibly pumped about the possibilities and can’t wait to get started this fall,” McAfee said. “Jimmy and I had a lot of great [conversations] through this whole process… some Zooms, calls (WHADD), texts (WHADD), emails (WHADD). It was a cool couple of months negotiation phase involving a lot of different factors.”
McAfee will be walking away from his contract with FanDuel – reportedly worth four years and $120 million – a business matter on which the company declined comment. In his direct message exchange, McAfee stated he could still do business with the company down the road and that the company will always experience success. Meanwhile, the company has yet to publicly recognize that McAfee is even exiting the contract.
“I’m thinking there’s a chance we’ll have an effect on sports media as a whole,” McAfee said. “That’s cool to think about for a dude who wasn’t accepted into the NFL’s Broadcast Bootcamp on a few different occasions.”
