There’s been a small shift in the discourse around the NFL’s media contracts since my last newsletter, and it suggests the plot is becoming a bit more complicated than originally expected. It started a week ago on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” when PGA Tour CEO and former NFL top media dealmaker Brian Rolapp noted the tension between the “finite” supply of money in the market and the NFL’s desire to significantly increase the roughly 40% of that market it already gets.
Over the weekend, Sports Media Watch’s Jon Lewis said on the “Sports Media Podcast with Richard Deitsch” that a huge escalation in NFL rights fees could even drive network parents, like Comcast, which owns NBC but drives most of its revenue in other business lines, to exit the TV business altogether. “I think that everything but the NFL, and frankly, maybe even for some networks, the NFL will get to a point where you look around and you say, ‘Yeah, I can pay this much money and do really well on television,” Lewis said. “But is that actually worth it? Maybe we just stop competing in television.”
On Monday, my former colleague, Puck’s John Ourand, led his excellent newsletter with the headline: “Is Goodell overplaying his hand?” He reported: “An interesting question has emerged among network observers and media analysts in recent weeks: What if the networks and streamers decide to just stand pat?”
On Ourand’s podcast Wednesday, Athletic writer Andrew Marchand said: “If they have to blow up their budgets, there’s going to be ramifications, be it not going for other rights or layoffs. Everything will be on the table because they just have to make up their money. They have parent companies.”
I’ve learned to not bet against the NFL getting its money. For a linear network, the downside risk of losing the NFL is too real and immediate for the league’s leverage to not ultimately carry the day. But if Ourand, Lewis and Marchand are saying this publicly, then analysts and negotiators are saying it privately: As bad as losing the NFL would surely be, there could be worse fates for a network in the late 2020s.
NFL owners will get an update next week in Phoenix on the state of media rights, though Goodell and Executive VP/Media Distribution Hans Schroeder won’t say much in front of the leaky full group of owners and exec. It’s possible we’ll hear about the status of the four-game mini-package, but one person suggested that Wednesday’s announcement of a game time for the Australia game without a distributor attached was an indication that deal is not ready yet.
