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There would be no more ABC Monday Night Football. With almost no bargaining position, a situation aggravated by the fact that Bornstein knew from eons of experience how much ESPN could afford to spend, Disney had to bid up to $1.1 billion a year for eight years to place Monday Night Football on ESPN’s roster. But there would be none of the flex scheduling that NBC received and, most shocking, no playoff games.

DICK EBERSOL:

There’s no question that if ABC-ESPN had made the deal within two weeks of the time the other networks did, they would have held on to both packages, and I’d be shocked if they couldn’t have held on to it for, like, a million-four for both. And that Sunday night package had one wild-card Saturday. But the point was, they ended up paying a billion-one, losing Sunday night, and not having any playoff games.

STEVE BORNSTEIN:

They lost Monday Night Football after a thirty-six-year run on the network. You don’t lose your number-one series after nearly four decades and not feel some disappointment. That was really part of the problem of being last. They weren’t able to set the table. They were only able to react to what was left.

DON OHLMEYER:

Steve could not have pushed any harder for ESPN to make the deal back in October. In a way, it cost them [Disney] a couple hundred million dollars by not listening to Steve—or, to put it another way, Steve made a couple hundred million dollars more for the league when they didn’t listen.

BILL CREASY:

I’ve heard there is criticism up in Bristol that the price ended up so high because of Mark. It is my 100 percent opinion that if Iger and George were not in the room, if the league and ESPN just put Steve and Mark in a room and said, “Don’t come out until you make a deal,” you would have never heard the price that they eventually agreed to. Mark and Steve would have hacked out a deal. I think Mark was frustrated. He knew he could make a deal but they never listened to him. From the league’s point of view, ESPN messed around too much.

BOB IGER:

I was feeling good that we had secured an eight-year deal for sports television’s most venerable franchise when the other TV packages went for six years. I also felt good that we had clearly strengthened one of Disney’s core brands, ESPN, and had created a new opportunity for ABC on Monday nights. And ultimately ABC created a franchise, Dancing with the Stars, that has given Disney a strong, enviable position with both men and women on Monday nights.

STEVE BORNSTEIN:

I don’t want to sound smug. I was pleased with the end result of these negotiations. Essentially, the NFL got paid more money for less product. We created a new package, and we got another hour of prime-time television because NBC was going to program the seven-to-eight-o’clock block promoting our sport. By 2006, the first year of this new deal, our ratings were up double digits on every platform.

ESPN should be thrilled with the football package, and I think most people there are. They’re making big money. It’s the premier sports network and they have the premier sports product—they have the crown jewel in sports marketing called Monday Night Football. There is nothing better than that.

Some say they pay more than other partners and the other partners have playoff games. That’s a specious argument. Who’s extracted the most value out of their association with the NFL? ESPN, ESPN, ESPN. So anybody at ESPN who is disappointed or angry is not really being intelligent.

AL MICHAELS:

Was ESPN going to do okay? Absolutely. Their template because of sub fees doesn’t allow them to fail. But they could have had Sunday night and Monday night and blown NBC out the door. Instead, NBC winds up with the number-one package. It was a major blown opportunity.

DAVID HILL:

Disney paid the big bucks on Monday night so they could jack up their cable prices; that’s all it is. Sunday afternoon is great for us because we didn’t sell advertising there and we do now.