After years of acrimony, the NFL and Comcast have finally come to an agreement on NFL Network.
The NFL and Comcast announced on Tuesday that they have come to a long-term agreement to shift NFL Network to the cable operator’s digital basic tier, settling a long, sometimes nasty conflict between the respective giants. Under the agreement, Comcast will offer NFL Network, “a robust suite of NFL content On Demand,” and the Red Zone Channel “when it is created.”
NFL Network will launch on Comcast’s digital basic tier by August 1.
The deal will “add 10 million homes” to NFL Network’s distribution. One of the keys to the deal was the NFL dropping its expected license fee from $0.70 per subscriber per month to “$0.40-0.45 per sub.”
Another key was the aforementioned Red Zone Channel. It was made available to cable operators following the NFL’s deal with DirecTV earlier this year, and the NFL sought permission to make it available to cable by rightsholders FOX and CBS — both of whom are expected to sign two-year extensions of their television contracts with the league.
The NFL/Comcast agreement just weeks after Comcast was set to drop NFL Network altogether, thanks to what appeared to be an impasse between the two parties.
As part of the agreement, the NFL and Comcast will “discontinue pending legal actions before the Federal Communications Commission and a New York state court.”
