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Thursday, March 25, 2021

The NFL TV Deal Has Winners and Losers


With its announcement of $10 billion worth of media rights annually, the National Football League completed a year that saw it shore up its business for the foreseeable future in the face of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, reports The New York Business Journal.

As U.S. society closed down and moved into a quarantine, the league’s schedule barely changed — from completing its NFL draft last April to staging the Super Bowl amid the COVID crisis. In between, it achieved labor peace through the next decade, and now, it is guaranteed fistfuls of media dollars through 2033.

It’s breathtaking to consider the numbers the NFL raked in. Fox more than doubled its rights fee to $2.25 billion per year; CBS saw its rights fee double to $2.1 billion; and NBC came close to doubling its rights fee to $2 billion. ESPN got the best deal — only a 35% increase. But it’s still paying an eye-popping $2.7 billion per year.

Winners:

Brian Rolapp: This is unquestionably Roger Goodell’s deal, and the commissioner rightly will get credit for it. But it was NFL's Rolapp whose deft negotiating strategy that was able to draw big increases from every package, even amid a pandemic and even amid a cord-cutting phenomenon that is hurting the TV business.

Robert Kraft: Kraft has to be considered a winner by virtue of the fact that he headed up the league’s broadcast committee. But we’re including him on this list as the face of ownership that is about to get a windfall in media money — an average of $10 billion per year, and that’s even before the league sells Sunday Ticket or mobile rights.

Jimmy Pitaro: Of the media companies, ESPN/ABC emerged as the clear winner, paying a much smaller increase than everyone else and still ending up with a lot more high-quality content, including two Super Bowls and flex scheduling.

Cord cutters: This deal enables most every NFL game to be available on one streaming service or another, giving fans without cable or an antenna better options.

Losers:

Big Ten, Premier league, MLS, Nascar: This NFL deal didn’t set the market for sports rights. It crushed it. Every sports league that has its rights deals coming up in the next year or two will find media company pockets aren’t as deep as they once were. Big leagues will be fine; it’s the small-to-mid-sized leagues that face a tougher market.

DirecTV: It’s no surprise that Sunday Ticket was not included in this deal — the NFL has been consistent in saying that it wanted to wait to finalize its Sunday afternoon deals before turning its attention to its out-of-market package. When those negotiations start up in full, DirecTV not only will find a lot of competition from streaming platforms, it will be dealing with a league that has made a big bet on the future of streaming, judging by the fact that almost every game will be available via a streamer.

The expansion of flex scheduling to include “Monday Night Football” will make it more difficult than ever for fans to plan around the in-person NFL experience. Imagine making plans to attend an out-of-town game one weekend only to find that the game is moved to Monday night.

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