𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

The following post is an excerpt from The Athletic’s sports business newsletter, MoneyCall. (Subscribe here for free, convenient email delivery.)

That you can watch the NFL Draft on TV via your choice of ESPN, ABC or NFL Network is not new. That all three productions are now owned and operated by ESPN is, following ESPN’s recent acquisition and absorption of NFL Network.

Consequently, ESPN presumably doesn’t care how you watch — just THAT you watch. With help from Chris Branch and nearly 5,000 readers of The Pulse, I did a quick (unscientific) survey earlier this week about that. Some takeaways:

📺 The draft remains a TV-driven spectacle: 92 percent of respondents will be watching at least some of the draft on TV. Most of the rest will surely still be following, just on their phones.

📈 Fans crave the wonky analysis: more than 70 percent of respondents said they will be watching on either ESPN (41 percent) or NFL Network (29 percent), which center draftniks like the inimitable Mel Kiper Jr. on ESPN and still-rising Daniel Jeremiah on NFL Net. ABC is a distant third. Speaking of draftniks, shoutout to my colleague Dane Brugler, whose NFL Draft mega-analysis “The Beast” is a must-see ahead of — and during — the draft.

🤩 People love Rich Eisen: of the three hosts (Eisen for NFL Net, Rece Davis for ESPN, Mike Greenberg for ABC), the longest tenured is also the favorite of nearly half of respondents. Interestingly, “none of the above” scored higher than the newer Davis or Greenberg. I think that’s less about preference than that a subset of fans just don’t care about the host.