The one-time face of Fox Sports, Joe Buck, will extend his ESPN tenure past the decade mark under a new extension.
ESPN has signed Buck to a six-year contract extension worth about $18 million annually, Andrew Marchand of The Athletic reported Wednesday, extending his tenure with the network to 11 years. In a statement, ESPN EVP/communications Josh Krulewitz said the company will not be “addressing talent contract specifics publicly before the Super Bowl.”
Buck will continue as the voice of “Monday Night Football,” and per Marchand, is the preferred choice of ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro to call the World Series if ESPN/ABC were to acquire that property. (Barring any contractual changes due to a potential lockout, the next MLB rights deal begins with the 2029 season.) He has called an Opening Day MLB game for ESPN in each of the past two seasons.
Prior to joining ESPN in 2022, Buck had spent the previous 28 years with Fox Sports — most of which was spent as its lead voice on both the NFL and Major League Baseball. He called every World Series FOX aired from 1996-2021 and every Super Bowl on the network from 2005-20, working each of the latter alongside longtime partner Troy Aikman, with whom he has paired on NFL games dating back to 2002.
Aikman’s contract is also set to expire after this season.
Now in their fifth season on “MNF,” Buck and Aikman already rank among the longest-tenured pairings since the series moved to ESPN in 2006. Mike Tirico paired with Jon Gruden for seven seasons from 2009-15, and with Ron Jaworski for five from 2007-11, including a three-year period where he worked with both in a three-man booth.
Prior to landing Buck and Aikman, the “MNF” booth had gone through four different permutations in less than a decade — Tirico and Gruden for the final time in 2015, Sean McDonough and Gruden in 2016 and 2017, Joe Tessitore, Jason Witten and Booger McFarland in 2018, Tessitore and McFarland in 2019, and Steve Levy, Louis Riddick and Brian Griese in 2020 and 2021.
This year marks the first time in the current NFL rights deal that ESPN/ABC will carry the Super Bowl, and the first Super Bowl assignment for Buck and Aikman since they worked the 2020 game for FOX.
