The announcement Monday that Comcast/NBCUniversal streaming platform Peacock has secured exclusive rights to air a playoff game on Wild Card Weekend was a sports media bombshell. SMW contributor Drew Lerner analyzes the implications.
The upcoming season marks the beginning of new media rights agreements for the NFL and its broadcast partners. As part of those agreements, each of the league’s four television partners (CBS, FOX, NBC, and ESPN) were guaranteed one game during Wild Card Weekend, with CBS, FOX, and NBC rotating a second game.
With only five of six Wild Card games accounted for in the new deals, there were questions as to where the sixth game would land. That question was answered on Monday. For a price tag of $110m, NBC’s Peacock was granted rights to the sixth Wild Card game for the 2023-24 season.
The news raised eyebrows across sports media. For one, the NFL is allowing a streamer to hold exclusive rights to a playoff game and notably, not the same streamer they’ve hitched their wagon to for the regular season with Amazon.
There are a number of risks involved with such a move, the most obvious being the untested platform. Amazon has had a full season of Thursday Night Football to work out any potential broadcast kinks related to streaming. Peacock’s past experience, on the other hand, is just two low-profile Notre Dame football games. Not exactly a stress test.
To be fair, Peacock successfully streamed WWE’s marquee event, Wrestlemania, last month without issue, and will have an opportunity for a dry-run Week 16 with an exclusive Bills-Chargers game. However, that’s not a ton of time to make necessary changes before Wild Card Weekend.
The other risk the NFL is taking on after agreeing to this deal is the lower level of distribution. It’s no secret that broadcast television still has the widest reach when it comes to viewership and that, by putting the game behind a paywall, the league will reach fewer people.
So what is the upside for the NFL?
Aside from the $110m payout (which some might argue, is actually a bargain for NBC), the league is able to acclimate viewers to the realities of a changing television landscape. The current media rights deals are inked for ten years, through the 2033 season. At that point, it’s unknown what broadcast television will look like. The Peacock deal is the first significant step in a hedging of bets by the NFL. If ten years from now streaming becomes the best option for the NFL from a distribution standpoint, they’ll be glad to have primed viewers for the switch over the course of a decade, rather than waiting until the last few years of the current deals.
What may be the most interesting aspect of this deal, however, is how it potentially went down. Peacock was far from a clear partner for the NFL in this scenario.
The obvious choice, if the NFL was set on a streaming-exclusive playoff game, would have been Amazon. They are a known commodity for the NFL and reach far more fans than Peacock. Additionally, they are the only broadcast partner currently without a playoff game — so the extra Wild Card game would have been a natural fit.
Ben Koo posits in Awful Announcing that the game may have been negotiated as part of a carriage dispute between Comcast (NBC’s parent company) and the NFL Network.
The timing of this dispute allowed for a bit of a role reversal. Whereas normally cable distributors have to bend the knee to the NFL, Comcast actually had a fair bit of leverage this time around. NFL Network was taken off of Comcast’s airwaves at a time in the NFL calendar where not much is happening — after the draft but before training camp. This is the one time of year where holding out would actually be reasonable for the distributor. Comcast would have saved about $1.80/month per household in carriage fees (or about $50-80m if they held out until training camp) and receive minimal blowback from customers.
The threat of Comcast digging in for an extended negotiation could have easily opened the door for sweeteners, such as the exclusive playoff game and even the marquee Bills-Chargers matchup in Week 16.
At this point, all of that is just conjecture — but it sure makes a lot of sense on paper.
No matter what happened behind closed doors, one thing is certain. The NFL has set the standard for how this game will be distributed in future years. It is hard to see the league roll this one back – it will likely stay on a streamer.
Further, the NFL has given itself a carrot and a stick. Keeping this game as a one year contract gives the league’s broadcast partners plenty of incentive to fall in line. Should a partner find itself in the good graces of the NFL? Thou shalt be rewarded with a Wild Card game.
