ESPN Has Hired Timbaland And Justin Timberlake To Curate Music For 'Monday Night Football' – Broadcasts, Promos, And More

ESPN has officially hired Timbaland and Justin Timberlake to manage music for Monday Night Football, which includes pre-game presentations, promotional pieces, and live broadcasts.

The Disney-owned sports network emailed DMN today to inform them of the agreement, which will last seven weeks, beginning with a season-opening game between the Buffalo Bills and the New York Jets on September 11th.

Following that, Timbaland and Timberlake (who owns a stake in Timbaland’s Beatclub music platform) will choose the songs for a Week 6 Cowboys-Chargers game, a Week 11 Eagles-Chiefs game, a Week 16 Ravens-49ers game, a Week 18 doubleheader, and the postseason’s wild-card and divisional rounds.

Meanwhile, “the users and A&R team” of Anthem Entertainment’s Beatclub will assist Timbaland and Timberlake “in the music creation for the season,” according to ESPN. To “kick off” the union and the NFL season, the trio and Nelly Furtado have prepared a single called “Keep Going Up,” which will be released this Friday and has already appeared in a 30-second promo for the Bills-Jets game.

Curtis Friends, ESPN senior director of sports marketing, spoke on the collaboration with Timbaland and Timberlake, emphasizing the longstanding connection between music and football.

“Football and music go hand-in-hand, like the iconic Timbaland and Justin Timberlake duo, who collaborate on music to near perfection,” said Friends, whose comments come one year after Apple Music was announced as the Super Bowl Halftime Show’s sponsor and two weeks after John Legend joined the $2 million round of sports-focused media site Fantasy Life.

“ESPN’s Monday Night Football music curatorship is popular with fans because it provides access to new and unexpected combinations of music and sport,” he concluded. “We’ve had Diplo, DJ Khaled, Drake, and Marshmello, and this fifth season, for the first time, we have two curators in Timbaland/JT who we know will energize all of us NFL football fans for this season.”

Last year, Amazon Music played live performances by Lil Baby, Lil Wayne, Megan Thee Stallion, and Kanye West after Thursday Night Football games. Furthermore, the NFL recently extended its multi-year relationship with Ntertain Studios and Miami-based Neon16, whose roster includes Bad Bunny producers Albert Hype and Jota Rosa.

ESPN Has Hired Timbaland And Justin Timberlake To Curate Music For ‘Monday Night Football’ – Broadcasts, Promos, And More

ESPN has officially hired Timbaland and Justin Timberlake to manage music for Monday Night Football, which includes pre-game presentations, promotional pieces, and live broadcasts.

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