The NFL’s TV deals are done. The league announced new contracts with CBS, Fox, NBC and ESPN/ABC on Thursday and also agreed to a deal with Amazon to make its Prime streaming service the exclusive home of “Thursday Night Football.” As part of the deals — which lock in revenues for the NFL of more than $100 billion through the 2033 season — ABC will come back into the rotation of networks broadcasting the Super Bowl.
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Our team of writers covering the deals — Richard Deitsch, Lindsay Jones and Daniel Kaplan — offer their takeaways:
Big picture: Will football fans notice any differences in the new TV deals? And are these deals good news for cord-cutters?
Deitsch: Let’s start with the bottom line for you as a fan: If you want to watch every NFL game, it’s going to cost you additional money. That’s the reality of the NFL extending its game inventory to streaming properties. The league attempted to navigate the new digital landscape by providing game inventory for its traditional over-the-air partners (CBS, NBC and Fox), extending inventory for its longtime cable partner (ESPN), and opening up a new landscape in the streaming space.
The biggest change for viewers is the exclusive games across the different platforms, and the major one, of course, is Amazon. If you want to watch “Thursday Night Football” outside of games in your home market — where they will still be broadcast on local TV — you will need Prime Video in the United States. The NFL announced a 10-year agreement with Amazon to exclusively broadcast 15 “Thursday Night Football” games and one preseason game per year. It’s the NFL’s first exclusive national broadcast package with a digital streaming service. As you see from the deal points, ESPN got much more game flexibility and inventory, so it makes it harder for NFL fans not to have some sort of ESPN package. Again, pay up.
Kaplan: Clearly, the biggest thing to change for viewers is the move of Thursday night games exclusively to Amazon Prime. Two Super Bowls to ABC and flexible scheduling for “Monday Night Football” after week 11 is nice, but the games are always where they have been: on a traditional broadcaster or outlet. Most observers assumed Amazon would have some exclusive games but not the whole set of “Thursday Night Football” games. Amazon clearly paid up, reportedly over $1 billion a year, but the league was also willing to make this leap quicker than some had expected. “Over the last five years, we’ve started the migration to streaming,” Patriots owner and NFL media committee chair Robert Kraft said. “And with today’s deals, we make another large step in that direction. Our fans want this option and our media partners and the league understands that streaming is truly the future.” For cord-cutters, this is good news. CBS will simulcast on its new streaming service, Paramount+, as NBC will on Peacock, ESPN on ESPN+ and Fox on Tubi.
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Does this deal give us a picture of what devices a typical fan will be using in the year 2030?
Deitsch: The goal of every professional sports league with a media rights deal should be to provide content to any and all screens and mediums. Nine years from now, I’d expect NFL fans to be watching games on television (still around, yes), laptops, desktops, iPads, smartphones and whatever new devices are invented between now and the end of the decade.
What will games look like on Amazon? Will they produce them and hire their own on-air talent?
Deitsch: This is a great opportunity for Amazon to create an on-air sports brand. And they have money. So look for them to hire best-in-class production people, and that should lead to innovative graphics and game presentation. I have no doubt they will hire their own talent for multiple presentations and I would expect Hannah Storm and Andrea Kremer — who have called the NFL’s previous games on Amazon — to be retained for one of those presentations. Most of all, my advice would be to take big chances. No one expects them to be CBS or NBC or Fox. Be different.
Kaplan: Amazon Prime deals digitally inserted in the end zones? Whole Foods specials scrolling? Probably not, but like Fox when it got into the NFL TV business in 1994 and took an outsider’s take on production, one can expect something similar from Amazon. For the first time since it entered the NFL TV business in 2017, it will no longer just be taking another broadcaster’s feed. Certainly expect different sets of announcers like Amazon has now. So a traditional duo, and then a series of broadcasters directed at niche audiences.
What games should we expect to see on NFL Network?
Kaplan: The NFL is committed to keeping games on NFL Network (not least for the subscriber fees, which would drop precipitously without at least five games). We know they won’t be “Thursday Night Football” games like they are now, but with a new 17-game schedule likely coming, more opportunities arise. NFL executive Hans Schroder emphasized on an ABC/ESPN conference call the NFL’s commitment to NFL Network and keeping games on the channel. What games are not exactly clear right now, or at least the NFL is not saying.
How will the league carve out games exclusive to digital carriers like ESPN+ and Peacock?
Kaplan: ESPN+ will get one exclusive game a year, an international one on a Sunday morning, while Peacock will “deliver an exclusive feed of a select number of NFL games over the course of the agreement.” An NBC spokesman added, “and will have one exclusive national game each year from 2023-28.” The biggest swath is clearly on Amazon Prime with its new deal.
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Deitsch: Probably the most interesting game among the streaming services connected to traditional NFL broadcasters is ESPN+ getting one annual exclusive national game, which will take place internationally and be aired live in the Sunday morning eastern time window. (That’s the old NFL Network spot.) I’d expect ESPN to go all-out on the promotion for that game to make it into something bigger. ESPN’s deal also allows ESPN the opportunity to simulcast all ESPN/ABC game telecasts on ESPN+. In addition to Peacock’s exclusive regular-season game, NBCUniversal said they will launch a virtual NFL channel, highlighting classic games, as well as NFL Films’ series, library, and archival content. What you should pay attention to as a viewer is how will the technology (latency, etc.) hold up. That’s what the league will be paying attention to as these streaming services gain more customers.
Should we expect to see more of the most popular teams on “Monday Night Football” now that flex scheduling is available for that night?
Jones: The NFL hasn’t released full details yet on how the flex formula will work for “Monday Night Football,” but it would be reasonable to expect it would be similar to the process that’s in place for “Sunday Night Football,” in which the league can move an undesirable matchup out of one of those premium prime time slots. Typically, those decisions are made two weeks out, and the other networks (CBS and Fox) have some rights to protect marquee broadcasts.
There will certainly be limits on how many times games can be flexed into or out of “Monday Night Football,” but the fact that it is an option in the new TV deals is a significant win for ESPN, which too often in recent years has been stuck with stinkers in its only game of the week. NBC’s Sunday Night Football has become the most valuable property, but having the ability to put better games on Monday night as well will help ESPN make up ground in that primetime space.
So the salary cap will be going up eventually thanks to these TV deals, right?
Jones: The NFL Players Association held out hope until early last week that even the potential for these TV deals to be done this month would bump up the 2021 salary cap. So, yes. These TV deals, while not officially kicking in until 2023, will impact next year’s salary cap. It would be reasonable to expect the 2022 cap to climb to at least $200 million, and agents have told The Athletic recently that they believe the 2023 cap could be in the $230 million range. That’s likely of little solace to the middle class of NFL players currently having to sign smaller and shorter deals, but it will be good news for those same players if they can hit the market again soon.
Will there be more Nickelodeon games (and others like that)?
Jones: Yes, absolutely. NFL and broadcast executives were both thrilled with the response to the Nickelodeon broadcast during wild-card weekend and will be experimenting with ways to repeat — or expand — that type of programming to reach additional audiences. That doesn’t necessarily mean NFL games will wind up on many more cable channels, but the streaming options, from ESPN+ to Tubi to Amazon, etc., provide plenty of bandwidth for non-traditional broadcasts.
Let’s move ahead a decade and think of what the next NFL TV deal might look like. Is this the last one dominated by traditional TV networks?
Deitsch: My counterintuitive answer is no. The streaming networks are here to stay and sports inventory has obviously been a major driver in attracting new customers. The demos don’t lie: Streaming services have a younger audience who have grown up without cable (or have grown up stealing or sharing passwords from their parents or friends). But by the conclusion of the 2033 season, I don’t see the reach of streaming services topping the reach of the traditional television networks. Those networks are still drawing 20-million-plus viewers every Sunday in the 4:25 p.m. ET timeslot. My answer might be different in 2043. If you asked me today, I think CBS, Fox and NBC remain major players in 2033.
Kaplan: If I could answer with certainty I would head to Vegas tonight. Eighteen months ago, roughly, Peacock, Paramount+ and ESPN+ didn’t even exist and now commissioner Roger Goodell is talking about them as critical to a series of deals worth $100 billion. Kraft said streaming is the future, and I believe that. My take is this is the last NFL media paradigm dominated by broadcast. At least 16 games in the package, out of 256 annually, are exclusively streamed (one on ESPN+ and 15 on Amazon, plus some years additional ones on Peacock). There is no way in 2033 that stays the same. I would hazard 50-50 by that time if there are even traditional broadcast networks remaining, which is a big question. Younger generations simply don’t turn on TVs. We have all seen it with our kids. Imagine our kids’ kids! Amazon paying $1 billion annually for a decade is just the start.
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Jones: I’m trying to fast forward and picture how my daughter, who is 4 1/2, will be consuming media when the next broadcast deals come around, when she’s 17 (gulp). I doubt her generation will be tied to traditional television, and my generation (don’t make me reveal how old I’ll be in 2033) is moving away from it as well. I believe there will still be a massive market for NFL games, but I have a hard time imagining the television landscape will look anything like it does now.
What’s your final takeaway about these deals?
Deitsch: The deal once again cements the cultural power of the NFL. Just look at the dollar figures they drew in the middle of a pandemic. For many years we have heard people, in both good and bad faith, suggest that the NFL’s hold on America was fading. It’s not. As we just saw from streaming, the league will continue to find new revenue sources such as gambling and the value of its data. Why it has our collective hold is an interesting sociological and philosophical discussion. But it has our hold — and that’s not changing for some time.
Jones: I’m waiting to learn the future of Sunday Ticket, which isn’t part of these new TV deals. Sunday Ticket will remain on DirecTV for the next two seasons, but after that, its future is unclear. ESPN has expressed interest, and there certainly could be streaming options for this popular package as well.
Kaplan: Kraft said something that jumped out to me: “Every week, we’re presenting our fans the most opportunities in these deals to watch the most compelling games free.” For years, the NFL mantra was all games would be on free over-the-air TV, it was a religion at league headquarters: the widest exposure possible. Now, Kraft is qualifying what types of games are available for free. (I wouldn’t, given these comments, bet on a compelling slate of “Thursday Night Football” games for Amazon.) Kraft’s comment is the NFL waving the white flag on its once sacrosanct principle of football for everyone. Now it’s football on as many platforms as possible, but in that balancing act, the NFL had to give up one of its foundational tenets.
(Photo of Tom Brady and Bucs vs. Packers: Mike Ehrmann / Getty Images)