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Despite its popularity, pervasiveness, and value, ESPN’s programming is not typically recognized as sophisticated or artful. To give its brand identity greater prestige within the increasingly competitive world of cable sports television, in 2008 ESPN created ESPN Films, a subsidiary film production unit that specializes in documentaries. ESPN Films’ most ambitious project thus far is 30 for 30 (2009–2010), a series of 30 documentaries made by 30 commissioned filmmakers to celebrate ESPN’s 30th anniversary. ESPN markets 30 for 30 through emphasizing three primary qualities that distinguish the series, and, by extension, ESPN, from other sports television: the use of the documentary form, the productions’ status as films, and the commissioned filmmakers’ position as renowned artists. This essay uses ESPN Films and 30 for 30 to examine ESPN’s efforts to add refinement to its institutional identity and to illustrate the economic and industrial functions this shift in cultural status serves.

This chapter examines how the development of cable television and NFL Media enhanced the production and circulation of NFL Films content. As NFL Films' programming set the stage for the development of twenty-four-hour sports channels like ESPN, it established a starting point from which the National Football League (NFL) formed its own network, the NFL Network. In 2004 NFL Films was designated part of NFL Media, a multiplatform subsidiary run by former ESPN president Steve Bornstein that now includes the NFL Network, NFL.com, and offshoots like the RedZone specialty seasonal cable channel and the NFL Mobile smartphone application. This chapter explores how NFL Films, which established a foundation for the development of cable sports television and the transformation of the NFL into a multiplatform media institution, has been constrained to adjust its practices to maintain a place within the contemporary sports media landscape and league it helped create. It also considers how the Internet created new opportunities for the NFL to build and circulate its image.

This chapter examines how NFL Films' engagements with aesthetic traditions, the discourses surrounding the company, and its selective incorporation of positive critical reception into its publicity materials separate the organization from other sports media outlets and, by extension, distinguish the National Football League (NFL) from competing sports organizations. Throughout its history, NFL Films has taken great pains to emphasize its distinction within sports media and in the broader contexts of art and media culture. The company places its productions in dialogue with established aesthetic traditions, reinforces its producers' status as legitimate artists, advertises the various accolades it has received, and distances itself from NFL's commercial motives. This chapter explains NFL Films' use of aesthetic traditions and discourses to craft its image and position the company as part of an artworld—a status that is remarkably rare in sports television and in sports media more generally. It also considers how NFL Films situates Ed and Steve Sabol as artistic visionaries who play central roles in reinforcing its efforts to claim status as a site that produces art.

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