The NFL’s deal with DirecTV may have given the league a bargaining chip in its negotiations with cable operators.
The NFL signed an extension of its carriage deal with DirecTV on Monday, keeping the satellite provider as the exclusive carrier of the NFL Sunday Ticket package through 2014. The current deal was set to expire in 2010.
DirecTV will now pay $1 billion per year for rights to the out-of-market package, up 43% from the $700 million per year the carrier pays in the current deal.
As part of the deal, fans in areas without access to DirecTV will now be able “to buy the full Sunday Ticket package over the Internet” no later than 2012. Additionally, the Red Zone Channel, “which jumps from game to game, airing live action when a team is… inside the 20-yard line,” will be made available to cable operators after being exclusive to DirecTV the past four years.
The Red Zone Channel could be the carrot that the NFL dangles in front of cable operators to get wider distribution for NFL Network. Major League Baseball was able to get wider distribution for MLB Network by offering cable operators its out-of-market package, and the NBA is about to do the same. While the Red Zone Channel is obviously not as attractive as the entire Sunday Ticket package, it could provide the “leverage that the league needs.”
While an NFL spokesman told Multichannel News that “the availability of the [Red Zone Channel] would not be tied to the providers? carriage of the NFL Network,” it would be “hard to imagine the league not offering a better Red Zone price to those distributors that just also happen to carry the NFL Network.”
