The era of Thursday Night Football simulcasts may not last much longer.
According to Sports Business Journal, the networks have told the NFL that they are uninterested in the league’s Thursday Night Football package due to a lack of exclusivity. The TNF over-the-air partner — currently Fox through 2022 — produces the full schedule but only gets to televise around half the games, splitting those in a simulcast with NFL Network and Amazon.
The lack of interest is not a new development. CBS and NBC, which split the TNF package in 2017 and 2018, ceded the rights to Fox without much of a fight. Last week, Fox Corporation CFO Steve Tomsic said at a conference that the company would prioritize its Sunday NFL package over TNF if forced to choose. While a given — Fox pays hundreds of millions more for the Sunday package, which includes playoff games and a Super Bowl — the statement was a rare admission by a network executive that a media rights package is expendable.
TNF does not necessarily need a broadcast network partner to continue. The package aired solely on NFL Network from its inception in 2006 through 2013. It could, as Sports Business Journal suggested Monday, continue to be simulcast on Amazon.
While the networks have reportedly soured on Thursday Night Football, all expectations remain that the NFL will generate massive increases in rights deals during the coming negotiations.
It would seem as if networks are becoming more judicious about sports media rights. The diminished interest in TNF comes in a year that Fox ceded rights to golf’s U.S. Open midway though a twelve-year deal and Turner Sports bailed on the remaining two years of its UEFA Champions League deal. Earlier Monday, the New York Post reported that ESPN is set to give up more-than-half of its current Major League Baseball inventory in a new deal that will be worth less annually than the current contract.
[News from SBJ 12.14]
