NFL Sets Big TV Deals With CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN/ABC, Amazon

The National Football League is celebrating in the end zone after completing eye-popping new rights deals for all of its TV packages. Most networks have extended their current NFL deals through the 2033 season: Fox and CBS hold onto their respective Sunday games, NBC remains with Sunday Night Football and ESPN continues broadcasting Monday Night Football, though in a new wrinkle, the Disney-owned network will simulcast multiple games each season on broadcast sibling ABC. As part of the new arrangement, ABC will rejoin the Super Bowl rotation alongside NBC, CBS and Fox, broadcasting the game every four years. This will be the first time that ABC will air a Super Bowl since 2006; the network last had Monday Night Football in 2005, though it did simulcast three of ESPN’s games last season. "These new media deals will provide our fans even greater access to the games they love. We're proud to grow our partnerships with the most innovative media companies in the market," NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. "Along with our recently completed labor agreement with the NFLPA, these distribution agreements bring an unprecedented era of stability to the League and will permit us to continue to grow and improve our game." Super Bowl broadcasts set Under the new agreement, worth an estimated $10 billion annually, CBS will broadcast Super Bowls in 2023, 2027 and 2031, Fox will get the games in 2024, 2028 and 2032, NBC will have the 2025, 2029 and 2033 game and ESPN/ABC will have the 2026 and 2030 Super Bowls. The only major change to the new rights deals is Thursday Night Football, which currently airs on Fox and the NFL Network. Beginning in 2023, Amazon Prime Video will receive exclusive rights to those games. The is the first time that a streaming service is in primary position for an NFL rights deal, though Amazon has been simulcasting the Thursday Night Football games since 2017. The new Monday Night Football deal starts next year, with the 2022 season, while the other deals take effect a year later. The Monday Night Football and Thursday Night Football games are required to be carried on over-the-air broadcast stations in the cities of the participating teams. Enhanced streaming rights The deal gives each company enhanced streaming rights to their respective games. CBS will stream its games on Paranount+, all ABC and ESPN games will be simulcast on ESPN+ (ESPN+ subscribers will also stream one international series game exclusively every season), Fox’s Tubi will deliver NFL programming on digital platforms and NBCUniversal’s Peacock will have “an exclusive feed” of a select number of games. It will also give the media partners more ability to create alternate broadcasts, as CBS Sports did with its playoff game on Nickelodeon. The new Disney deal is estimated at around $2.7 billion per year, according to the Wall Street Journal, up from the current $2 billion pact. Fox, CBS and NBC have all roughly doubled their current deals (Fox’s averaged $1.1 billion per year, CBS’ was $1 billion and NBC’s was $950 million), while Amazon's deal is estimated at $1 billion annually. One big NFL deal remains up for grabs: the NFL Sunday Ticket, which is currently with DirecTV through the 2022 season, but is expected to go to a streaming service. Ratings still robust While much was made of the decline in NFL games this season—regular season ratings dropped 7% from the previous season, to the lowest regular season average since 2017—the audience for NFL games continues to dwarf almost everything else in television. According to Nielsen, the 2020 regular season average drew an average of 15.4 million viewers in live-plus-same-day ratings, excluding games that were rescheduled due to the pandemic. That’s significantly more than the highest-rated primetime show this season, The Equalizer, which is averaging 13.7 million. Currently, five of the top 10 broadcast prime-time shows in total viewers this season are NFL related, including No. 1 (the CBS post-show, with 18 million) and No. 2 (Sunday Night Football, with 16.7 million). And the five top-rated prime-time programs in the coveted adults 18-49 demographic are all NFL-related, led by Sunday Night Football (with a 4.9 rating). Eight of 2020’s 10 most-watched single telecasts were football games or postgames, while a ninth aired immediately following the Super Bowl. NFL games also took two of the top 10 regularly scheduled prime-time programs of the year, including the No. 1 slot. (All of Nielsen’s year-end stats are in total viewers, live-plus-7.) In 2019, the NFL generated an estimated $4.6 billion in national TV ad revenue: $3.3 billion in the regular season and an additional $1.3 billion in the playoffs and Super Bowl. That’s more than double the national TV ad revenue that season from the NBA, MLB and NHL combined ($2 billion). Last week, the NHL struck and Disney struck a seven-year hockey rights deal for linear and streaming platforms.

Programming & Performance

NFL Sets Huge New TV Deals With CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN/ABC and Amazon Prime Video

The new agreement is worth an estimated $10 billion annually

Jason Lynch

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Jason Lynch