The NFL is indeed set for additional broadcast television inventory this coming season, with FOX and NBC receiving some of the ex-ESPN inventory that at one point was earmarked for YouTube.
The NFL awarded FOX and NBC one game each out of the four windows ESPN relinquished as part of its deal to acquire NFL Network, Sports Media Watch has learned. The league is also expected to convert one regionally distributed game each on FOX and CBS to a national window.
The end result will be four additional national windows on broadcast television using a mix of new and existing inventory.
The league had been expected to see a slight increase in broadcast television inventory this season, and the ex-ESPN windows will functionally shift cable-exclusive inventory to broadcast. (Officially, the four ex-ESPN windows contractually belonged to ABC and ESPN+ as part of overlapping “Monday Night Football” doubleheaders. But with ABC apparently set to simulcast ESPN games in those four weeks instead, the change amounts to dropping four ESPN-exclusive editions of “MNF.”)
Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said on an earnings call Monday that the company’s new windows would consist of a Week 10 International Series game from Munich, which would air in an early morning window as part of a FOX tripleheader — the first NFL tripleheader on a single broadcast network since 2016. The second would be a Saturday game in Week 15. It was not clear which game came out of the ex-ESPN inventory and which was elevated from the Fox regional slate.
NBC announced Monday that its additional inventory would be a Saturday game in Week 17 leading into its annual Peacock-exclusive game, giving the company three exclusive windows that week.
CBS announced later Monday that its additional game window will air on primetime on the Saturday of Week 15, creating a split-network doubleheader with Fox on December 19. That is likely to be the day on which the College Football Playoff schedules the bulk of its first round games.
The additional broadcast TV inventory comes as the NFL faces a federal investigation into its rights deals with streaming companies that has been cheerled — and potentially may have even been sparked — by Fox Corporation.
The four ex-ESPN windows were originally expected to form the bulk of a new five-game media rights package — also including the league’s new International Series game from Australia — that the league had been reportedly shopping throughout the offseason. At some point in the process, the NFL is said to have shifted from shopping a single five-game package to splitting that inventory between Netflix and Google-owned YouTube. John Ourand of Puck reported last week that YouTube was not interested in that arrangement, and the two games it would have received were instead shopped to broadcast television.
The other two games are expected to go to Netflix, which would presumably form a ‘five-game package’ featuring those two contests, the Australia game, and its existing Christmas Day inventory.
