The winter of 2022 was the greatest frenzy of sports broadcasting talent in history, with hundreds of millions doled out for NFL commentators.
ESPN poached Fox’s top team, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, for a combined total of $165 million. Newcomer to the NFL, Amazon Prime Video signed Al Michaels — who had been discarded after calling his record-tying 11th Super Bowl by NBC — to a contract that included his customary private jet travel to and from games.
Even the deals that didn’t happen were exorbitant. Just off a Super Bowl win, Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay was tempted to leave coaching by a potential $20 million a year offer to join Michaels on Amazon’s “Thursday Night Football.” McVay decided to remain on the sidelines.
At Fox Sports, top executives, Eric Shanks and Brad Zager, stayed quiet after losing their marquee names, Buck and Aikman. The executives plotted behind the scenes.
During that winter, seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady — widely considered the greatest player in history — briefly retired. Fox put him on the top of its game analyst board but considered it a long shot. It believed if the modern-day Babe Ruth or Michael Jordan were available, you had to at least make a call.
Even after 40 days, when Brady said he would play quarterback another season, Shanks and Zager didn’t stop their pursuit as they decided that Brady would be worth the wait. Despite expressing no previous interest in broadcasting, Brady did not immediately spike the initial overtures. It got to a point that Brady seemed willing to take a face-to-face meeting.
Before Shanks and Zager could set up their secret presentation to Brady that March at Los Angeles’ Hotel Bel-Air, the duo first had to secure the approval of their boss, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch, on what would be the largest sportscasting commentator contract ever. Murdoch gave them the go-ahead to take the meeting.
It echoed the aggressive big sports dealmaking of Lachlan’s father, Rupert, who used the NFL to establish Fox as the fourth major broadcast network nearly three decades earlier.
On May 10, 2022, slightly more than two months after Lachlan Murdoch gave the green light, he announced to the world on the company’s earnings call that Brady would be Fox Sports’ lead NFL game analyst upon his second and final retirement. No terms were disclosed.
Shortly after, it was revealed by sources briefed on the contract that the deal was for 10 years and $375 million. While Fox initially denied the numbers reported that day, Lachlan later told Axios the report was “directionally right.”
It turns out, the contract has stock options, according to sources with knowledge of the deal, and Fox has performed well so, at this point, the deal may end up being north of $375 million.
Yes, it is Tom Brady, but the “why” of it all has never been answered. Why do it? The short of it is, in Fox Sports’ view, you are signing more than an analyst.
“We work in a multibillion-dollar business,” Zager, Fox Sports’ president of production and operations, told The Athletic. “We make decisions every day where value comes from and where to spend that money and get that value. The moment that Tom was available, the importance of the NFL to any media company right now has always been high and probably never higher. What Tom brings with his ability to get sponsors and clients, everybody is motivated to be a part of this brand.”
To understand the full sense behind it all, The Athletic spoke to Zager on the record and fellow TV executives, agents and broadcasters on background to figure out:
Why is Tom Brady worth $375 million to Fox?
Before you can understand the why of Brady’s $375 million deal, the how must be addressed. How did we get here? How did once-a-week announcers get paid more than most of the players they cover?
Like most things in the world of sports media, for better or worse, it centers around ESPN. In 2016, ESPN’s then-president John Skipper allowed “Monday Night Football” play-by-play voice Mike Tirico to flee to NBC, where he would stand in the on-deck circle as the heir apparent to Michaels as the play-by-player on NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” and to Bob Costas as the lead host of NBC’s Olympics coverage.
This led to ESPN royally annoying the NFL because ESPN’s post-Tirico booth was never quite right. From Sean McDonough to Joe Tessitore to Steve Levy on play-by-play, it never sounded big enough for the booth that once had Howard Cosell, Frank Gifford and the aforementioned Michaels.
McDonough didn’t mesh with lead analyst Jon Gruden, and both were soon gone. With Tessitore, ESPN tried to replicate CBS’ then-sensation, Tony Romo, by recruiting Romo’s Cowboys teammate Jason Witten and putting easy-going former defensive lineman Booger McFarland on a sideline crane, one of the all-time strangest moves in sports media. Levy had player personnel specialist Louis Riddick and journeyman quarterback Brian Griese as his partners.
After Skipper exited ESPN in 2017, Jimmy Pitaro was installed and tried to repair ESPN’s strained relationship with the NFL, including a promise of an enhanced broadcast. While the play-by-play announcer is generally the most important for a booth’s success — which is why the Tirico loss had such a far-reaching impact — it was one problem at a time for ESPN.
Tony Romo’s early success in the CBS NFL broadcast booth ultimately led to a re-setting of the market for high-end NFL TV talent. (Photo: Matthew Eisman / Getty Images)
When Romo’s rookie TV contract for three years and $10 million concluded in 2020, he was looked upon as the next John Madden, the highest compliment an NFL TV game analyst can receive.
CBS waited too long to close a deal with Romo, allowing ESPN to have an opening. Pitaro placed a 10-year deal on the table for $140 or $150 million, depending on whom you believe.
This was just before the onset of the COVID pandemic in 2020 and the NFL deals with its network partners were soon up. CBS’ parent company, Viacom, was facing the pressure from Wall Street that it was too small to compete with behemoths, like Disney and Comcast. Plus, there was talk that Disney’s Bob Iger might go after CBS’ AFC Sunday package for ABC.
With the desire to have Romo on CBS’ side for its renewal negotiations with the NFL and with Viacom not wanting to look weak, it was the perfect storm that delivered the then-highly praised Romo a contract that, all-in, was valued at $180 million for 10 years. The contract, with Romo’s uneven performance over the years, might not have aged well, but it had logic at the time.
Romo’s $18 million a year is almost the equivalent of eight million dollars a year in 1993. That was the year Rupert Murdoch made his industry-upending deal with the NFL, doling out an astronomical $1.58 billion over four years to swipe the NFC package from longtime league partner CBS, a strategic coup that resulted in upstart Fox joining NBC, ABC and CBS as broadcast TV stalwarts. Soon after, Fox snatched up Madden on an at-the-time record-breaking four-year, $32 million contract.
From then on, Fox’s sports brand has been about star power.
In the winter of 2022, before the Brady signing, Fox seemed to be on its heels after sustaining the 1-2 punch of Aikman exiting and then, even more shockingly, Buck. Like CBS, Fox was a smaller company compared to its network competitors.
Buck had become a legend at the network by being the voice of the World Series for nearly a quarter century and then successfully succeeding Madden’s partner, Pat Summerall, on Fox’s top NFL team.
To land Buck and Aikman, Pitaro, ESPN’s chairman, had already out-Rupert’d Fox Sports that winter, stealing the duo to finally solidify Pitaro’s “Monday Night Football” main broadcast with separate five-year deals. Aikman received $90 million, while Buck took home $75 million.
Because Fox didn’t match nor exceed the offers for Buck and Aikman, there was a thought maybe Fox was playing “Moneyball” and would go with a younger, less expensive and lesser-known Greg Olsen to pair with Buck’s replacement, Kevin Burkhardt. (Olsen was Fox’s interim No. 1 NFL analyst and called the 2023 Super Bowl with Burkhardt on Fox, to rave reviews.)
Since the overall NFL ratings would be the same if it were Tom Brady, Greg Brady or Jan Brady, the idea of going cheaper made some sense. But that is just not in the Murdoch Fox Sports DNA.
“We felt like to not ask the question, to not see if you can bring Tom Brady into your network and your brand, would’ve been us not doing our jobs properly,” Zager said.
A rival TV executive said it is supply and demand — “and there is only one Tom Brady out there.”
Fox’s Super Bowl broadcast team, which includes play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt (left), analyst Tom Brady (center) and sideline reporter Tom Rinaldi (right) will be drawing enormous attention during the game, in large part due to Brady’s popularity and his role as a first-time Super Bowl game analyst. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
The Brady deal is about the game, but not really about the game.
That’s not to say that Fox doesn’t have high hopes for Brady in the booth. Peyton Manning, Brady’s biggest rival as a player, consistently makes next-level points on the ManningCast, an alternate simulcast to “Monday Night Football,” for which he is paid annually in the neighborhood of Brady. Brady was about the substance and the sizzle, which is Fox’s way.
“We are dealing with the craziness of this generational announcer shift in our industry, and I think you start with credibility and with people that you think can bring something to the brand and the broadcast that nobody else can, and I don’t know if there is anybody that can do that more than Tom Brady, if you’re putting together that list,” Zager said.
From Aikman to Fox’s top pregame show, the network seemingly has a dress code for its analysts — no yellow Hall of Fame jacket, no entry. Terry Bradshaw, Michael Strahan, Howie Long and Jimmy Johnson have been fixtures for decades on the Fox NFL Sunday pregame.
The NFL is the biggest entertainment vehicle in the United States, accounting for 85-95 percent of the top-rated shows each year.
Fox pays the NFL $2.2 billion per year, which includes half the late-afternoon Sunday windows, usually the most-watched regular-season TV window. It has playoff games, including the NFC Championship every season, and Fox is in the Super Bowl rotation. (In a scheduling quirk due to the onset of new TV deals, this Sunday will be Fox’s second Super Bowl in the last three years. Fox’s next one will not occur until February 2029.) Production costs, according to executives, run around $100 to $125 million per season for a network.
The TV talent-agent talk has always been that the announcers deserve more, given the context of the billion-dollar league contracts. Using this math, Romo’s roughly 600 percent raise from his third-year rookie TV deal to his fourth-year second contract can be rationalized as a rounding error on a network’s overall NFL TV expenditure.
When Lachlan Murdoch announced the Brady agreement on that May 10, 2022, earnings call, Murdoch specifically pointed out that Brady’s role included being “an ambassador for us, particularly with respect to client and promotional initiatives.”
This has played out beyond the NFL games. Brady has been live and done voiceovers on his alma mater Michigan versus Ohio State matchups on Fox. He has shown up in an IndyCar promotional spot. He has participated in the United Football League, which is partly owned by Fox.
“You saw him handing out the trophy for the UFL last year,” Zager said. “All of a sudden, it is not just a spring league giving out a trophy. It is Tom Brady handing out a trophy at the UFL (championship game). The credibility that that gave that league at that moment, I’ll let others put whatever value they want.”
For Fox Sports, Brady has brought in new sponsors, including a multimillion contract with Duracell, according to sources briefed on Fox’s advertising sales. Fox sells the same amount of commercial inventory with or without Brady, but if Brady is needed to play a round of golf or make a call, he is about as good of a closer as you could find.
From all accounts, Brady has been a very good teammate, which is helped by the fact Fox treats him like a Lombardi Trophy encased in protective glass.
Though Brady stated as a player that he had no real interest in being a broadcaster, his path is not unusual. Nearly all the modern-day all-time quarterbacks — Joe Montana, Dan Marino and Joe Namath to name a few — have at least dabbled in TV.
Brady is just at another level, as he is considered the best QB of them all. The TV game analyst role is not worth $375 million, but, after the market changed, if you want Tom Brady, that is what it costs.
(Top illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; top photo: Aaron M. Sprecher / Associated Press)