The biggest reason for the recent rush to CBA negotiations seems to be centered around NFL content rights deals. Here’s the simple logic: the sooner the better for both the owners and the players. Another year leads to more uncertainty. You may have heard this rumor about cord-cutters leaving traditional cable and getting over the air antennas — a different type of OTAs when it comes to football — which aren’t tracked using traditional methods. The league and players have to think that they can cash in on a great season and strong viewership numbers from last season. Owners are apparently scared enough of traditional distributors getting cold feet from the continuation of cord-cutting/market factors, a dip in ratings due to competition from the upcoming presidential election and apparently Bernie Sanders.
Fine, Sanders won’t really affect ratings, but there is maybe some logic behind the concern that owners won’t be in as much of a powerful position next year as they are now and they should strike while the iron is hot. We get it. It’s an interesting message being pushed, but that’s now why we are here.
We are here to try and figure out what will actually happen. We’ll go through each package and take a guess where it ends up after the television dust settles.
AFC Sunday Package: CBS
This is going to be kind of boring. See, there’s very little shot of the NFL moving its Sunday package off of traditional broadcast television. CBS has the money to pay for the rights and there is some expectation that CBS — this will hold for the NFC package as well — that prices could increase by 50 percent. That means the current $1 billion per year deal that CBS has will move up to around $1.5 billion for every season — and let’s assume the television deal will be five to seven years long.
There aren’t any real competitors for the AFC package. CBS has had a conference package for every year except one since 1982. That’s not going to suddenly change.
NFC Sunday Package: Fox
Fox didn’t unload all their movie and cable assets to Disney to watch the broadcast network suddenly stay out of the bidding for live sports. In fact, Fox will have to be more involved in sports and news than ever before because that’s what they are banking on to make money. Fox currently pays $1.1 billion per season for the Sunday NFC package. They’d probably like to pay the same amount as CBS.
Sunday Night Football: NBC
This is pretty boring and standard but NBC has done a great job with the marquee NFL game of the week. It wasn’t long ago that Monday Night Football was the marquee game and Sunday Night Football was more like Monday Night Football — I know it’s confusing. NBC changed that. NBC currently pays $950 million per season.
Here’s where it gets interesting. If Sunday Night Football is getting the best games and has a flex option and Monday Night Football on ESPN is currently $1.7 billion per season . . . shouldn’t NBC be paying that much as well? Rights aren’t going down here and NBC has gotten the benefit of flex games. The NFL will ask for $1.7 billion, but NBC will probably end up paying around $1.5 billion.
Monday Night Football: ESPN
Here’s where things get a little tricky. Disney/ABC/ESPN is going to want games flexed into Monday Night Football. Last season had some great games, but previous seasons’ schedules weren’t exactly good. The NFL may agree to flex some games into Monday Night, but they will probably want Disney to move Monday Night Football to ABC. After all, broadcast networks can get more viewers simply because it’s not cable.
ESPN can’t do that. They need the NFL. ESPN has had some form of NFL football since 1987. The World Wide Leader is also going to have to figure out what its future looks like as its dual revenue stream continues to shrink as cable subscribers continue to dwindle in the future. There’s a way Disney can have its cake and eat it too.
Special Package: ABC
With the 17th regular-season game being added, the NFL can get creative when it comes to slicing out rights. This idea isn’t original. Awful Announcing actually suggested it in October of last season. Essentially a special package would be created specifically for ABC. This could be neutral site games focused around London. It could be some holiday games. The NFL will need to get creative but it helps the league get more games on television and it helps Disney get NFL content on its broadcast network. Maybe the league can carve out another $500 – $700 million on this deal. The NFL gets $660 million currently for Thursday Night Football
Thursday Night Football: Fox and Amazon
There’s no reason for this to change. Fox did a great job with Thursday Night Football and Amazon is the perfect streaming partner. Amazon didn’t put in all this time and investment to give up on live sports. Fox already has television rights for Thursday through 2023.
Sunday Ticket: Multiple
The days of exclusive Sunday Ticket may be over. The NFL may want to be able to spread out the streaming deal to make more money with multiple partners. The league would have that option. Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Apple, ESPN+ and DAZN will all be interested in Sunday Ticket streaming rights. The league might as well see if they can get a few of them to pay to be providers. It’s like multiple streaming providers agreeing to be PPV partners.
