Fox latest network to join in draft craze

Fox is going all-in on the NFL, and for the first time this year will televise the April 26-28 NFL draft, according to multiple people with knowledge of the plans. Fox and the NFL Network will team up for a joint production, mixing talent from both networks on a co-branded broadcast. One feed will appear on both networks, the people said.

ESPN, which has broadcast the draft each year since 1980, will continue to do so. Since 2006, both ESPN and the NFL Network have broadcast separate productions of the draft. Last year, 6.7 million viewers watched ESPN’s coverage of the first round, while 2.5 million watched on the NFL Network.

The NFL, Fox and ESPN declined to comment. News of Fox televising the draft was first reported by ProFootballTalk. Last month, the NFL announced that Fox had won the rights to broadcast 11 games of “Thursday Night Football” for the next five seasons. The rights to televise the draft were part of that package, and according to Sports Business Journal, Fox will televise the draft for the next five years.

Despite television ratings for the NFL having fallen 19 percent over the past two seasons, Fox has decided to make the league a cornerstone of its programming. In addition to winning the rights to “Thursday Night Football” and the NFL draft, the network might soon be televising an additional playoff game as well.

After being held in New York for 50 years, the NFL has treated the draft as a traveling circus since 2015, setting up shop in different cities with all manner of fan activities surrounding the actual picks.

Last year a reported 70,000 people showed up to the first round in Philadelphia, and this year’s draft is poised to be even bigger, as it will be held at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, the home of the Dallas Cowboys.

The draft has evolved into the biggest event of the NFL offseason, and a bridge from the Super Bowl to the opening of training camp, in no small part because of the efforts of ESPN starting in 1979.

In the beginning, ESPN didn’t pay to televise the draft, then a sleepy meeting of team representatives in a hotel ballroom. After owners learned how much ESPN was earning from the draft, they demanded the network cover its cost, and then eventually charged a rights fee to televise it.