The NFL’s looming return to the media rights market has other leagues looking to get there first.
Several leagues with expiring media rights deals are interested in returning to the negotiating table early out of concern that the NFL will deplete the market with its own expedited talks, John Ourand of Puck reported Thursday. New PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp, who prior to his current position was a longtime NFL executive, is said to have told the organization’s media partners that he is “open” to negotiating new deals in the next year or two — well ahead of the current expiration date of 2030.
Other leagues with expiring deals in the next five years include two of the “Big Four,” Major League Baseball and the NHL. MLB has deals with four NFL rightsholders, Fox Corporation, NBCUniversal, ESPN and Netflix; the NHL has deals with one, ESPN.
It is widely expected that the NFL will seek massive increases in its current rights fees when it returns to the negotiating table, which Ourand reported could happen as soon as this fall. Currently, two of the NFL’s five primary broadcast partners — NBCUniversal and Amazon Prime Video — pay more in rights fees for the NBA than the NFL. Disney pays virtually the same for both leagues, $2.7 billion for the NFL and $2.6 billion for the NBA.
Given the wide gulf in viewership between the NFL and NBA, it is easy to imagine the NFL seeking rights fees far exceeding those of the NBA — which would seemingly put the starting price for each partner somewhere in the neighborhood of $3.0 billion.
The concern is that such massive spending will leave little available for the other leagues. Just this week, Fox Corporation Lachlan Murdoch said the company could consider “rebalancing” its sports portfolio to “offset” any increase in its NFL contract. Fox has three years left on its Major League Baseball contract and is entering the final World Cup of its deal with FIFA.
There was already some concern about the market tightening after the NBA’s $77 billion media rights deal was struck in summer 2024. It appeared for months that Formula 1 would fall well short of its desired rights fee before Apple swooped in with a lucrative deal.
And while Major League Baseball was able to turn ESPN’s opt-out last February into three new deals, new partners NBCUniversal and Netflix are reportedly paying less than half as much as ESPN was in its old deal. (MLB was able to increase its rights fees thanks to an entirely new ESPN deal, but it required giving up additional inventory.)
Between the NFL’s incumbent partners and any hopefuls interested in the extra inventory the league likes to carve out from its main packages, it is not hard to imagine much of the industry stockpiling their resources for the NFL — and exhausting them by the time the negotiations are done.
