The NFL could begin renegotiating its media rights deals as soon as next year, per league commissioner Roger Goodell.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell told Alex Sherman of CNBC that the league is interested in renegotiating its media rights deals “as early as next year,” confirming a previous report by John Ourand of Puck. The league would need permission from its partners to do so, but Goodell was confident that will not be a problem: “I think our partners would want to sit down and talk to us at any time, and we continue to dialogue with them. I like that opportunity.”
The current NFL media rights deals do not expire until after the 2033 season, and the league does not have the contractual ability to opt out of those deals until 2029 (2030 for Disney).
Goodell told Sherman that the league felt “strongly” about including the contractual opt-out provisions because the industry “changes so quickly that you want to have the ability to move.” According to Sherman, Goodell indicated that the desire to move ahead of those opt-outs was motivated by other recent sports rights deals, which have made the NFL feel that it is leaving money on the table.
That would seem to be an obvious reference to the NBA, which struck rights deals totaling $77 billion last year — not that far off the $111 billion the NFL earns from its deals, which were struck in 2021.
If the NFL were to begin renegotiating its rights deals next season, it would open the door to possibilities that have thus far remained hypothetical. For example, is Amazon now an established enough partner to get into the Super Bowl rotation? The streamer’s VP and global head of sports Jay Marine said the Front Office Sports Tuned In event last week that airing a Super Bowl is Amazon’s “ambition” — albeit only “in the fullness of time” — and that he is “optimistic.”
(For his part, Goodell said in a separate piece by Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic Wednesday that a Super Bowl on a streaming platform is “certainly possible.”)
The NFL and ESPN have pledged that their pending agreement to exchange ownership of NFL Network and other assets for an equity stake in ESPN will not impact future negotiations, but that would be immediately put to the test. Indeed, the NFL could be negotiating a new media rights deal with ESPN while the other agreement is under regulatory scrutiny.
A renegotiation would come at an opportune time for both Paramount-Skydance and Fox Corporation, both of which are looking to cement the futures of their broadcast networks — CBS and FOX — amidst a time of transition.
There is of course some risk if the networks allow for an earlier opt-out and then lose some of the rights they currently have. Outside of its primary media rights packages, the NFL has struck several deals for individual games with Netflix and YouTube, establishing relationships that could grow in the next negotiation. A Netflix executive made waves in February when she said she would “definitely want the Sunday [afternoon] games” if the streamer were to steal a package from one of the other networks.
