The incumbent NFL broadcasters may end up paying at least 50 percent more — amounting to in excess of $3.0 billion a year each — simply to keep their rights through the end of the originally negotiated terms.
The NFL is seeking a rights fee increase north of 50-60 percent as part of its media rights negotiations with CBS parent company Paramount Skydance, with that range representing the “midpoint” between what the league is seeking and what it is currently being offered, according to Alex Sherman of CNBC. A 50 percent increase would raise the current CBS rights fee of $2.1 billion/year past the $3 billion mark.
As John Ourand of Puck reported last week, the new rights fees will kick in immediately upon the completion of any deal. The league is expected to negotiate its renewals one-by-one, starting with Paramount and then Fox, per Ourand.
The new report Friday was the first concrete indication of where the NFL might set the market for its expedited media rights negotiations. A 50 percent increase across the board would take each of the league’s broadcast network rights deals past the $3 billion mark, with Disney paying more than $4 billion. But Amazon, which is paying just $1.0 billion/year for its main “Thursday Night Football” package, would still be paying less than $2 billion.
There is no reason to believe the NFL would seek consistent increases across the board, as it has not done so in past negotiations. In the 2011 media rights talks, Disney agreed to pay nearly twice as much for NFL rights ($1.9B/year) as any of the other networks (FOX was second-highest a $1.1B/year). When those rights were renewed in 2021, CBS, NBC and FOX saw their rights fees double, while Disney — which remained the highest-paying rightsholder — came away with a comparably modest 40 percent increase. One can envision a repeat in the upcoming negotiations, as it is hard to imagine that Prime Video will continue paying half as much as the other networks.
Notably, any eventual deal cannot be accurately described as a media rights ‘extension.’ Per Sherman, the NFL is agreeing only to waive the opt-out provision it could otherwise exercise in 2029. And while it has long been assumed that the NFL would exercise that opt-out, the fact is that those 2021 media rights deals were always set to run through the 2033-34 season. In agreeing to negotiate early, the networks are merely guaranteeing that they will have rights for as long as was originally negotiated.
