The man who once said he’d never work for a four-letter network could be changing his mind, thanks to an eight-figure payday.
Andrew Marchand of the New York Post reports that ESPN is considering a pursuit of Al Michaels for the role of play-by-play announcer for Monday Night Football.
ESPN is a late arrival to the scene. Michaels’s contract with NBC expires after Super Bowl LVI. He has been linked to Amazon’s looming Thursday night package for months.
While the money from Amazon surely would be sizable, the size of the platform remains unknown. How many will dial up Amazon Prime for Thursday Night Football?
When Sunday Night Football moved from ESPN to NBC in 2006 and Monday Night Football moved from ABC to ESPN, Michaels chafed at the notion of working for a cable channel. NBC wanted him for Sunday nights, and he was “traded” to NBC for the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a Disney creation that had landed with NBC’s parent company, Universal.
ESPN has several games simulcast on ABC, including the wild-card game. Also, ABC/ESPN have re-entered the Super Bowl rotation.
