Walt Disney announced overnight that it was to end 35 years of sports broadcasting tradition by moving the Monday Night Football programme from its ABC network to the ESPN sports cable network ,which it also owns, in a $9 billion, eight-year deal with the National Football League (NFL), who run American football.

The NFL also said it had reached a separate, six-season deal with rival broadcaster NBC to acquire rights to the Sunday games now held by ESPN.

Sources quoted in the New York business media suggest that ESPN will pay the NFL $1.1 billion (about £500 million) a year for the Monday Night Football franchise, while NBC, a unit of General Electric, has agreed to pay $600 million (£300m) a year for 16 Sunday night games and the annual Thursday season opener.

The NBC package will also include two play-off games and three prime-time pre-season games each year, as well as the 2009 and 2012 Super Bowls.

Both deals come into effect for the 2006 season.

Monday Night Football has been a keystone of ABC’s prime-time schedule and one of the most watched weekly sports event on American television since its launch in 1970, attracting an average audience of more than 16 million each week between September and January.

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