A number of reports over the past week have the NFL at the goal line of new, highly lucrative media rights extensions.
The Athletic on Thursday was the latest publication to report that the NFL could announce renewals of its media rights deals with incumbents NBC, CBS, ESPN and FOX within the next month. Per the report, rights fees could increase by 50-100 percent over the current levels, which range in annual value from just shy of $1 billion per year (NBC) to nearly two billion (ESPN).
The Athletic joins CNBC, Variety and NBC Sports’ Peter King in reporting as much over the past week. Consistent among the reports is a timeline of the coming weeks for an official announcement, plus the factors that have been known for months — that the league will be largely maintaining the status quo at a far higher price tag.
While the NFL is expected to maintain its current television setup of Sunday afternoon games on FOX and CBS, Sunday night games on NBC and Monday night games on ESPN, the fate of the Thursday Night Football package remains undetermined.
As has been previously noted, there is limited appetite among the networks for Thursday night simulcasts due to the lack of exclusivity. All TNF games air on NFL Network, with ten simulcast on both FOX and Amazon Prime. While there have been reports that Amazon could become the exclusive home of the simulcasts, The Athletic reported Thursday that a “broadcast component” remains possible. To that point, CNBC reported last week that ESPN could pick up rights to those games for ABC.
Per that same CNBC report, the NFL deals could have been announced in December if not for the uncertainty regarding TNF.
[News from The Athletic 2.18, Variety 2.12, CNBC 2.10, NBC Sports 2.14]
