NFL Insiders often toe the company line. They seldom criticize the league and almost never utter a negative word about any of the billionaire owners.
But on Monday, one Insider broke the mold.
The MMBQB’s Albert Breer, who’s covered the NFL for well over a decade, called out the league for conducting media layoffs while continuing to break revenue records. On Monday, it was reported the NFL has agreed to a one-year, $110 million deal with NBC to exclusively air a Wild Card playoff game on its streaming platform, Peacock.
“That the NFL conducted layoffs due to the economic “realities” of 2023 while pulling down $110 million to give a single playoff game to a streaming service is … a pretty good indicator on who the owners are,” he tweeted.
That the NFL conducted layoffs due to the economic "realities" of 2023 while pulling down $110 million to give a single playoff game to a streaming service is … a pretty good indicator on who the owners are.
— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) May 15, 2023
That’s a significant salvo from somebody who covers the day-to-day happenings of the NFL at the national level, and presumably relies on front office figures to feed him information. As Adam Schefter’s leaked emails to former Washington president Bruce Allen indicate (hello, “Mr. Editor”), NFL Insiders are typically quite cozy with the league’s decision makers.
Breer deserves credit for tweeting the truth about the absurdity of NFL owners claiming economic hardship, while annual revenue creeps towards $20 billion–largely thanks to monstrous media rights deals. Two years ago, the league inked a new rights package with CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN and Amazon worth about $110 billion over 11 years.
More recently, YouTube agreed to pay roughly $2 billion annually for rights to the Sunday Ticket franchise.
And yet, NFL Media cut about 5% of its full-time employees in Los Angeles earlier this month, due to apparent “economic and industry-wide shifts.”
Three prominent reporters, Jim Trotter, Mike Giardi and on-air talent Rachel Bonnetta, have also left NFL Network in recent months. Trotter’s contract curiously wasn’t renewed after he publicly asked commissioner Roger Goodell about the lack of diversity among NFL Media leadership.
Breer previously worked at NFL Media before heading to Sports Illustrated’s NFL vertical, The MMQB. He’s been outspoken in the past about the limitations of working for the league-owned entity.
“I think the best way to put it is I’ve been there five-and-a-half years and it’s a very limiting place in a lot of different ways,” he said in 2016. “The rules were one way when I got there, and they’re very, very different now. And there are a lot of stories that I haven’t been able to do that I will be able to do now.”
There are also, apparently, some tweets he’s able to send out, too.
