NFL Wants to Shake Down Broadcasters for New Deal Early

The NFL signed an 11-year deal with its broadcast partners in 2021, but CNBC reports the league wants to cut that agreement short. Officially, the league has an opt-out clause after the 2029-30 season. Instead, the NFL wants to renegotiate as early as next year.

From the league’s standpoint, this makes sense. As tech companies like Apple, Amazon, and Netflix have been more willing to pay up for sports rights, bidding has never been more furious. Just last month, Paramount Skydance wildly overpaid to get its hands on UFC rights. And the NFL is significantly more popular.

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Nielsen reports that 72 of the top 100 programs in 2024 were NFL games. And that was a year with an election and the Olympics. In 2023, 93 of the 100 most-viewed programs were NFL games. Advertisers are starving for those live audiences. The NFL delivers.

Of course, when media companies pay more for content, they pass the price on to you. HBO Max’s leaders have the audacity to say they’re underpriced, even though they lost the NBA. Hulu is raising its prices across the board, even though the catalog remains stagnant. As Peacock is on the verge of its first NBA season, that fee got a hefty jump.

Many people may not remember that FOX was basically a CW-level channel before it landed the NFL in 1993. Football became a Trojan horse. If cable companies wanted FOX, they’d have to add a new channel called Fox News when it launched in 1996. From then on, the only way you could get a full NFL package was to subject your subscribers to the daily screeching of leggy blondes and small men dedicated to making you hate your neighbor.

As live TV costs soar and audiences flee, entertainment companies now see the battle for sports rights as existential. If you have a sport people want, you can charge nearly anything and espouse any ideology on your platform. Hell, if the Saudis throw a few billion into Trumpcoin, the NFL might be willing to partner with Truth+. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has always been more loyal to green than to red, white, and blue.