For Friday night’s inaugural YouTube NFL stream from Brazil featuring the Chiefs and Chargers, Jason Kelce was a no-brainer option to contribute to the broadcast.
Unfortunately, ESPN had a two-word response: “No way.”
Via Ryan Glasspiegel of FrontOfficeSports.com, ESPN blocked Kelce from participating in the game.
Jason’s brother, Travis, plays for the Chiefs (if you haven’t heard). They share a wildly popular podcast, New Heights (if you haven’t heard). It had massive YouTube numbers during a recent episode featuring Travis’s future wife, Taylor Swift (if you haven’t heard). And Jason has served as a spokesperson for YouTube’s Sunday Ticket (if you haven’t seen).
But ESPN, like other broadcasters, are now very stingy when it comes to sharing talent with other networks. It has complicated the efforts of YouTube and Netflix to staff their “one-off” NFL telecasts.
Of course, Jason Kelce could have added a term in his contract allowing such moonlighting — if he’d known ESPN would be adopting a policy of preventing on-air employees from taking on other assignments. Given that ESPN pays Jason $8 million per year, there’s a good chance ESPN would have agreed to it at the time they were recruiting him.
Then there’s the fact that the NFL will, pending regulatory approval, own 10 percent of ESPN. On one hand, the NFL has an interest in enhancing the YouTube presentation. On the other hand, the NFL has an interest in protecting ESPN’s interests.
It would be interesting to know what the outcome of the YouTube Kelce request would have been if the ESPN-NFL deal had already been finalized. Which means it will be interesting to see how such issues will be handled after the deal is finalized — and the NFL has a more effective way to call ESPN with a two-word message, “Relax, guy!”