John Ourand speculates NFL partners won’t hold out until 2029-30, will strike new deals before opt-out

The will-they won’t-they dynamic of the NFL’s effort to renegotiate new media deals with its current broadcast partners several years early has been arguably the most important topic on the sports media beat for an entire year now. In fact, it’s been a year and two days since Puck sports correspondent John Ourand first reported the possibility of the NFL engaging its broadcast partners for new deals several years prior to the league’s opt-out options at the end of the decade.

And even after an entire year of reports and speculation, we’re seemingly no closer now to knowing what these new deals might look like, how much networks are ultimately going to end up paying, or if the networks will even agree to new deals at all before the NFL’s opt-out option hits following the 2029-30 season.

As recently as a couple months ago, it seemed the idea that networks could hold out until the end of the decade was picking up steam. After all, the NFL was facing pressure from all corners of Washington, D.C., and there was an argument to be made that the league’s current partners were better off saving a few billion dollars and rolling the dice come 2030 that the NFL would still want to do business with them.

It seems as if that idea is losing steam. Wall Street analysts seem to believe that the NFL will still be able to strike new deals with its media partners within the next year or so, raking in billions more in exchange for dropping the opt-out option and allowing the status quo (or something that resembles it) continue through the 2033-34 season, when the NFL’s current deals technically expire.

Now, Ourand, the reporter who broke this story open initially, is endorsing that philosophy. During a recent appearance on The Main Event with Andrew Marchand podcast, Ourand speculated that the NFL would likely strike updated deals with its current broadcast partners by next offseason, downplaying the possibility that networks could try and hold out until the end of the decade.

“I do get the sense, on both sides, that the NFL and the broadcast networks want to get some sort of deal done,” Ourand said. “My prediction is negotiations are going to happen during the season and new deals could come — who knows how the negotiations are going to go — but the new deals could come by the end of the season or at some point during next offseason. I don’t see the broadcast networks as holding out until 2029-2030, which I think we had talked about being a possibility even just two months ago.”

A couple of things have changed in the intermittent months that have pushed the equation towards these deals getting done sooner rather than later. For one, Comcast announced it plans to spin off NBCUniversal, greatly increasing the importance of retaining NFL rights for NBC. Secondly, Fox announced its $22 billion acquisition of Roku, a deal that stands to increase its leverage with distributors and advertisers, allowing it to better monetize NFL rights.

Still, the NFL has yet to formally engage any of its broadcast partners about new deals aside from Paramount, due to the change-of-control provision triggered by Skydance’s acquisition of the company last summer. That means there’s a long way to go before the NFL reaches the finish line on these retooled agreements.

But it appears as if the sands are shifting in the league’s direction, and it’s more likely than not that early deals are on the horizon.