Predicting NFL media rights in 2030, 2.0

Just over a year ago, I published a column titled Predicting NFL media rights in 2030. The premise was straightforward: guess how the NFL will slice and dice its broadcast inventory between television networks and streamers in 2030, when the league will almost assuredly opt out of its ongoing contracts with CBS, Fox, NBC, and Prime Video. (The league’s option with ESPN hits a year later, in 2031, to guarantee the network a second Super Bowl, and it’s a safe bet the NFL will opt out of that contract as well when the time comes.)

Coincidentally, just hours after I published my first prediction, the NFL media-rights beat went into a frenzy. Puck’s John Ourand reported that the league was looking to compel broadcast partners to the negotiating table during the offseason to secure increases to its media rights fees several years before the end-of-decade opt-outs. Later, it was reported that the league planned to offer partners the option to remove the opt-out clauses from their current contracts if they agreed to the early rights-fee increases, ensuring that partners willing to accept the terms would hold onto NFL inventory into the mid-2030s.

Such a proposal offered a security blanket of sorts for broadcast networks: Pay more now, and in return, guarantee yourself the all-important retransmission fees from distributors and affiliates that are only possible with NFL inventory.

At first, it seemed almost a foregone conclusion that networks would find a way to pay the NFL more money. Retransmission fees are the lifeblood of network television, and NFL programming is the only content that can reliably keep the lights on. But then, between a coordinated political pressure campaign from Fox, corporate upheaval at CBS and NBC, and an asking price from the NFL that even the most risk-averse networks were likely to balk at, it became clear that the window for early renewals had closed, and 2030 will again be the date of the next major NFL media rights shakeup.

In some ways, that means we’re right back to where we started when I wrote my initial predictions last summer. But even with the 2030 opt-outs once again looking like the next major inflection point, much has changed in the past 12 months that warrants updating my initial predictions.

CBS parent company Paramount is finalizing an acrimonious acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery that will leave the company with enormous debt. NBC will be spun out from its corporate parent, Comcast, into its own independent entity just over a year after Comcast spun off its cable television networks into Versant. ESPN closed a deal with the NFL to acquire NFL Network and other NFL Media assets in exchange for the league taking a 10 percent equity stake in the network. Fox is preparing to purchase streaming giant Roku for $22 billion.

Suffice it to say, the consolidation period of legacy media is now in full swing, and much of these corporate machinations will directly affect where NFL games land and how the league might choose to divvy them up by 2030.

Last year, my initial predictions were as follows:

• Thursday Night Football would remain on Prime Video
• An “A” package of Sunday afternoon games would be split between Netflix and Prime Video
• A “B” package of Sunday afternoon games would be split between CBS and Fox
• NBC would retain Sunday Night Football
• ESPN would retain Monday Night Football
• YouTube would secure an international package after the league expands to an 18-game season

Now, however, the puck has moved substantially.

Broadcast networks are in a stronger position than last year. Politicians in Washington have sent a clear message to the NFL about accessibility, endorsing free, over-the-air broadcast networks as the preferred way to distribute games. Beyond the political pressure, uncertainty about demand for NFL rights from tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Apple has further strengthened legacy broadcasters’ position.

Whereas tech companies and their associated streaming services were once seen as the platforms that would fuel the NFL’s next big payday, shifting priorities towards investment in AI have softened those expectations. Billions that once could have been allocated to expensive live sports rights might now be better spent on AI advancements.

All this to say, the NFL might push less aggressively into streaming in 2030 than we once thought. Broadcast networks could play a bigger role than we once forecast. And the league might value a more straightforward approach to its television schedule than the creative, profit-maximizing scenario we drew up a year ago.

How would that look? Well, we’re taking another stab at things below. Here’s v2.0 of our NFL media rights forecast for 2030.

Thursday Night Football – Prime Video

Once again, we believe Amazon’s Prime Video will retain Thursday Night Football through 2030, though we expect the streamer to get a bigger slice of playoff inventory than it currently has.

At $1 billion per year, Prime Video’s current Thursday Night Football deal is a bargain, especially given how the NFL has improved the once-lowly package in recent seasons. (For reference, the next most-inexpensive NFL package is $2 billion per year.) Amazon will have to pay significantly more to retain the package at the end of the decade, but if any company can afford to outlay a billion or two more per year for the NFL, it’s Amazon.

The streamer has already shown a strong commitment to live sports, perhaps more than any of its peers. Prime Video will broadcast NBA games through 2036. It has NHL rights in Canada well into the 2030s. It also holds valuable Champions League rights in Europe.

The only question for Prime Video is whether its ambitions grow and it wants to make a play for Sunday Night Football. We’ll get to why there’s a more likely partner for that package later.

Thursdays remain a good fit for Prime Video as, even with an expected price increase, it should remain relatively affordable. It’s a standalone weekly package, which streamers value. And assuming the NFL sweetens the deal with additional playoff inventory, and maybe even an invitation into the Super Bowl rotation, Amazon should be more than satisfied building on the Thursday Night Football brand.

Monday Night Football – ESPN

The other package we don’t anticipate seeing major changes to is Monday Night Football. ESPN has planted its flag on Monday nights for decades, and given the network’s equity deal with the NFL, it’s hard to imagine ESPN losing the package or any structural changes to how the NFL schedules Monday games.

Demand for Monday Night Football doubleheaders proved minimal after the NFL, and ESPN experimented over the past few seasons, retiring the practice this year. Instead, ESPN got its extra inventory through the NFL Network acquisition.

Unless another bidder becomes enamored with the idea of taking Monday Night Football from ESPN, this package seems least likely to undergo major changes.

Sunday Night Football – Netflix

Here’s where things get interesting. Analysts have long identified NBC’s Sunday Night Football as the most likely NFL package to change hands once the league brings its media rights back to the open market. There’s good reason for that; the Sunday primetime slot is tailor-made for a streaming service. Prime Video has already provided a proof of concept with Thursday Night Football; standalone NFL windows are perfect for streamers.

And Netflix, more than any other major streamer, has the appetite to make a splash in this way.

For one, Netflix is slowly losing ground on the engagement front to free platforms like YouTube and Tubi. The streamer needs to add tentpole content to justify its comparably high prices, which now approach $20 per month for the ad-free tier.

Speaking of ads, Netflix needs to bulk up its offering to entice more advertisers as its ad-supported tier becomes a larger portion of its subscriber base. Nothing serves as rocket fuel for an advertising business quite like the NFL. Legacy networks regularly leverage NFL programming to compel advertisers to purchase spots across other, less valuable programming. Sunday Night Football would let Netflix run the same playbook to juice its ad business further.

Of course, we’ve all heard about Netflix’s desire to “eventize” its sports content, and nothing comes closer to a big-time event, at least every week, than Sunday Night Football.

To be sure, the NFL will likely charge Netflix a king’s ransom for this package, but Netflix should be willing to pay. Sunday Night Football would help the streamer’s engagement woes and ad business, and Netflix is a content company in a way its tech-giant competitors simply aren’t. Netflix doesn’t have to invest in AI at the same rate as Amazon, Google, and Apple do.

At the end of the day, Netflix’s core business is having content that people want to pay for. There’s arguably no better content available than one of the top NFL games of the week in a standalone window on 18 Sundays each year. Not to mention, Netflix has already signaled it wants a deeper relationship with the NFL by expanding its mini-package of games from two to at least four per year through the 2029-30 season.

From the league’s perspective, shifting Sunday Night Football from broadcast television to streaming is about as frictionless as a shift to streaming can be. Netflix is already in tens of millions of households across the country, and NFL fans are already trained to switch from Fox or CBS to somewhere else for Sunday Night Football. Is there really that big a difference from flipping on Netflix instead of NBC once 8 p.m. ET rolls around? Arguably, no.

The question then is what happens with NBC?

Sunday afternoon games – CBS, Fox, and NBC

Sunday afternoons are where we predict the NFL will make its biggest structural change. As it stands, the league has two Sunday afternoon partners: Fox and CBS. The league has kept the number of Sunday afternoon broadcasters at two for decades, even during periods in the ‘90s and early ‘00s when CBS and NBC were on the outside looking in.

In 2030, we predict that number will expand to three.

Conventional wisdom for selling sports media rights has always been to have more bidders than packages to sell. Scarcity drives up prices, and it’s always best to have a credible alternative to turn towards if negotiations with an incumbent head south.

That might not be the case during the late stages of the traditional pay-TV bundle. The NFL, in fact, likely stands to make more money by splitting its Sunday afternoon packages into three sets of games instead of two. Why? CBS, Fox, and NBC would sooner pay the NFL more money for fewer games than lose the NFL altogether. And there’s a pretty straightforward way to make the three-way split work without overcomplicating things.

Two networks will air regional action during the 1 p.m. ET window, while the third network will air a national game to 100% of the country at 4:25 p.m. ET.

This could work one of two ways. The NFL could sell two 1 p.m. ET regional packages to two of the three networks and sell the 4:25 p.m. ET national package to the third network, essentially creating a brand-new premier window that competes only with the lesser 4:05 p.m. ET West Coast kickoffs shown in a limited number of markets. Or, the NFL could set up a rotation in which all three networks take turns with the national 4:25 p.m. ET game (six weeks each across an 18-week season), while handling the 1 p.m. ET regional window in the other weeks.

Regardless of which route the NFL chooses, this accomplishes several things for the league. Sunday afternoons would remain exclusively on broadcast television, assuaging some of the political concern it faces in Washington. The league would maximize revenue by keeping CBS, Fox, and NBC in the game. It would also create a new fully national window at 4:25 p.m. ET, already the NFL’s most-watched timeslot. Meanwhile, the new arrangement would be minimally disruptive to fans.

In an interview last week, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell alluded to the possibility that the NFL’s current television packages are not set in stone. This kind of slight alteration to how Sunday afternoon games are divvied up is precisely the type of change Goodell could be referring to.

Of course, this arrangement depends on CBS, Fox, and NBC all accepting fewer games, and likely paying a bit more than they do now for the privilege. But fewer games also keeps prices affordable for the networks as their margins continue to thin out because of cord-cutting. It might be considerably easier for networks to stomach an increase of $1 billion per year instead of $2-3 billion. And for the NFL, it’s better that CBS, Fox, and NBC all pay, say, $3 billion per year, than if just two of those networks shell out $4 billion per year. Win-win.

International games – YouTube

The one aspect of media rights we haven’t touched on yet is the likelihood that by 2030, the NFL will have added an 18th regular-season game and could very well take a full-season package of international games to market. Assuming the league can work out a deal with the players to add another game, the international package could be a good fit for YouTube.

These games, likely to be played at odd times for American audiences, are best positioned for a global platform like YouTube. This package is also likely the most affordable of all available NFL packages, and YouTube has already proven price-sensitive when buying NFL inventory. This was clearest this past offseason, when YouTube pulled out of negotiations with the NFL after the league wanted the platform to split a proposed five-game package with Netflix.

Further, YouTube doesn’t really need a package of NFL games to benefit from the league. It’s already locked in as the exclusive distributor for NFL Sunday Ticket, the league’s out-of-market package, which helps drive business to YouTube TV. And YouTube TV already has all of the games on CBS, Fox, NBC, and ESPN. Adding an international package for YouTube would simply be icing on the cake.

For the NFL, however, a full-season package on YouTube would be invaluable to its prospects of growing the game abroad (another reason this package will likely be priced reasonably). The first YouTube-exclusive game, a Week 1 contest between the Chiefs and Chargers from Brazil last season, didn’t blow the doors off in ratings, especially internationally. But a consistent, week-to-week presence on YouTube could change that.

Conclusion

Despite the league’s failure to negotiate early renewals over the past 12 months, it remains in a position of strength and flexibility. Negotiations ahead of the 2030 opt-outs will begin sooner than it seems, and the league can get creative in how it slices and dices games. The above predictions are a sensible path forward for the league that both emphasizes the reality that streaming is the future of television consumption by placing arguably its most valuable package of games on Netflix, while also acknowledging that the broadcast networks are negotiating from a stronger position than most gave them credit for just a year ago.

The NFL has mastered the art of making its games widely available while also maximizing its revenue potential, something other leagues have struggled with. It’s easier to do that when your programming is the most important content on television, but it’s still difficult to balance the two without going too far in one direction.

Given its popularity, the NFL can make decisions based on a much longer time horizon than most other leagues. That lets the league err a bit more on the conservative side in distribution, while still cashing massive checks. Expect that trend to continue at the end of the decade.