Taco Bell and the NBA agreed on a 4 year deal allowing them to advertise on ABC, TNT and ESPN, and NBA-themed promotions.

They quickly reached an over-the-air television deal with ABC Sports and a cable TV deal with then-fledgling ESPN.

In September, the Clippers announced a radio broadcast deal with KSPN-AM, the local ESPN Radio-operated outlet.

ESPN and the ACC have a rights deal that extends through the 2026-27 season which provides additional football, men's and women's basketball and Olympic sports coverage on a variety of platforms, suggesting the bias may have a financial motivation.

ESPN began to show more Olympics highlights on-air and online beginning with the 2006 Winter Olympics ; they received these extended rights from NBC as part of the deal that saw ABC release Al Michaels from his contract, so he could join John Madden and key production personnel for the new NBC Sunday Night Football.

The deal with ESPN fell through, but a delayed competition took place April 21 – 25, 2009 with fewer than 20 college teams participating.

The sale was part of a deal that centered around both the rights to Oswald and NBC's acquisition of the rights to the NFL's weekly Sunday night game ; in exchange for NBC Universal selling the rights to Oswald to Disney, Al Michaels was freed from his contractual obligations with ESPN and ABC so he could join NBC and become the Sunday Night Football play-by-play man.

He said he would seek a one-year deal, and according to ESPN First Take and his own blog page 38 Pitches.

After Sega's ESPN NFL 2K5 successfully grabbed market share away from EA's dominant Madden NFL series during the 2004 holiday season, EA responded by making several large sports licensing deals which include an exclusive agreement with the NFL, and in January 2005, a 15-year deal with ESPN.

When the Rush returned in 2010, the AFL signed its TV deal with NFL Network, but the Rush were not featured as often as they had been with ESPN and NBC, averaging between 2 and 3 telecasts a year on NFL Network in 2010 and 2011, but were shutout from the national spotlight in 2012.

Under the terms of a television deal signed with ESPN in 2006, the bowl will be held after Christmas Day from 2006 – 2009, and be shown on ESPN in prime time.

This was a particularly hard blow to Sega, the previous holder of the ESPN license, who had already been affected by EA's NFL deal.

In 2005, EA Sports and ESPN signed a massive 15-year deal for ESPN to be integrated into EA Sports video games.

EA's use of the ESPN license has steadily increased over the early life of the deal.

Enrique Rojas of ESPN Deportes called the contract " one of the worst deals ever from a team's point of view " because Brown averaged only nine wins per season and was frequently injured during the seven years of the deal.

He signed a six year deal with ESPN in 2006.

In April 2010, however, ESPN extended Berman's contract for an undisclosed period of time, only noting that it was a multi-year deal.

* In Canada, TSN has owned the rights to the tournament since 2011, as a result of an international deal between the NCAA and ESPN International ( which is a minority investor in TSN ).

In 1999, seeking to change this, the company announced a deal to buy out the Canadian partners of NetStar Communications, owner of TSN, but was stymied by U. S. partner ESPN, which had veto power over such a sale.

In December 2007 former Mariners outfielder Shane Monahan gave an interview with ESPN. com in which he stated that amphetamines and steroids were both rampant in the team's clubhouse in the late ' 90's.

Due to his poor performance and high contract, NPR of Minnesota called him a bust, ESPN named him to their all-overpaid team, and Sports Illustrated named him as the only pitcher on their all bust team, noting he gave up one home run per 11. 9 batters.

Following his departure as coach of the Detroit Pistons, Scotty Connal gave Vitale his first TV opportunity at the then fledgling ESPN cable network.

On the week of the race on May 19, ESPN gave no reason for his absence but announced Kolber as the new host of Nextel Cup and Busch Series studio programming.

ESPN sportscaster Chris Berman gave Tasker one of his famous nicknames: Steve " A Tisker a " Tasker.

In July 2008, the Big East and SportsNet New York announced a multi-year deal which gave SNY exclusive regional rights to Big East coaches shows and ESPN Plus-produced games.

During Wright's time with ESPN Radio, he bucked a number of conventions held by other hosts, including giving the call-in number as " 1-888-RAW-ESPN " where all other hosts gave out " 1-888-SAY-ESPN ".

Electronic Arts in the early 1990s used to have a faux sports network logo on their sports games called EASN ( Electronic Arts Sports Network ), but soon changed to EA Sports after ESPN requested that they stop using it.

PTI will be featured on future EA Sports video games due to the contract between ESPN and EA.

In 2005, in response to EA Sports ' exclusive license with the National Football League and ESPN, Take-Two Interactive signed an exclusive third-party licensing contract with Major League Baseball ( MLB ), MLBPA and MLBAM to produce MLB games in its 2K Sports series, making MVP Baseball 2005 the last MLB game in the series.

In March 2011, ESPN reported that EA would bring the series back as a console game after the exclusive licensing deal expires in 2012.

As a result, ESPN NFL 2K5 was priced at $ 19. 99 the day it shipped ( versus the typical new-release price of $ 49. 99 that EA ships under ).

EA also signed an agreement with ESPN to become the only license of ESPN's brand in sports games on all platforms.

The ESPN brand was used for 3 games, with the second game even being renamed ESPN NBA Basketball, until ESPN signed a 15-year deal with EA Sports.

It has been cited as one of the toughest places to play in the nation by EA Sports and ESPN.

His music has been licensed for television campaigns by ESPN, EA Sports, the NHL, and Prudential Insurance.

Chemda sings on four of Conjure Ones tracks, and she co-wrote two of the songs ( one of which was licensed to ESPN and played on its year-end sports program in early 2002, the other licensed to EA Sports for FIFA 2002.

Since 2007, ESPN2 as well as ABC and ESPN have been the exclusive carrier of all Nationwide Series races, replacing Fox, FX, TNT and NBC.

Rogers continued to sub-license a yearly package of games to TSN for several seasons afterward until 2010, when TSN traded its remaining Blue Jays games back to Sportsnet ( to allow it exclusive coverage of the team ) in exchange for rights to ESPN Sunday Night Baseball.

* On October 1, SingTel has won the rights to broadcast the Barclays Premier League matches across its platforms, as well as exclusive broadcast rights to ESPN STAR Sports for mio TV.

It also had exclusive access to Disney Channel, ESPN and MTV Australia though it always lacked the general entertainment channels that Foxtel had.

On September 14, 2005 however, ESPN, then the current rights holder, signed an eight year contract with Major League Baseball, highlighted by the continuation of ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball series with additional, exclusive team appearances.

* Brazil – ESPN Brasil has exclusive rights to broadcast live two Championship matches every week.

The channel's other highest-profile sports coverage was its exclusive UK rights to Ultimate Fighting Championship archives as well as recent events ( live rights are now held by ESPN ), as well as related reality TV show The Ultimate Fighter.

Since 2010, ESPN has held the exclusive U. S. rights to The Open Championship, making it the first major championship in the television era not to be aired live on one of the country's major over-the-air broadcast networks, though ESPN sister network ABC airs tape-delayed coverage of the third and fourth rounds in the respective afternoons.

On July 3, 2011, ESPN obtained the exclusive broadcast rights of Wimbledon, in a 12-year deal.

Beginning in 1998, ESPN broadcast the entire slate of Sunday night games ( now officially rebranded as Sunday Night Football ), and had exclusive rights to any night game other than the season opener and regular Monday night games, which aired on ABC.

The NBA rejected NBC's offer and after the network's exclusive negotiating period with the league expired, ABC and ESPN stepped in.

Wednesday Night Baseball is not exclusive to ESPN.

An exclusive feed for Brazil was launched on December 15, 2005, introducing programming subtitled in Portuguese, ESPN Brasil programming and events commented by ESPN Brasil staff.

Fox's postseason coverage beyond the World Series is limited to one League Championship Series per year ( the American League Championship Series in odd numbered years and National League Championship Series in even numbered years ), which alternates every year with TBS ( who took over exclusive rights to the Division Series from ESPN ) airing the other LCS.