Amazon leads streaming video’s deepening advance into the established media with the US NFL revealing a new $US113 billion broadcast deal that will change sports rights around the world – including Australia.
The new 10-year deal sees a greater role for streaming video services lead by Amazon which will get exclusive rights to one game a week, while other services owned by the networks and Disney are included in the arrangement.
It’s not just the mammoth size of the $US113 billion package or more than $US10 billion a season – it’s the greater role for streamers that will give Amazon the exclusive rights to Thursday night game every week for the next 10 seasons.
As well the Disney-owned ESPN + streaming services gets one of the NFL games played in London early in the season and the NBC streamer, Peacock will get exclusive rights to games as well over the decade.
But while the greater involvement of streaming services in one of the world’s biggest sports rights deals is big news, Australia has actually beaten the NFL to the punch.
The Nine Entertainment streamer, Stan, has the sole rights to Rugby Union in Australia (although some games are also broadcast on one of Nine’s linear TV channels) in a $100 million three-year deal.
The NRL and AFL in Australia have been toying with the idea of involving streaming services – Kayo, the Foxtel streaming service currently has deals with both codes, but not on an exclusive basis.
Kayo streams the Foxtel coverage (every game each week in the AFL and NRL). But because the NRL and AFL resigned new deals last year in the wake of Covid pandemic, with extensions to later this decade (2027 in the case of Foxtel with the AFL and 2024 for Seven), the two Australian codes are now well off the pace globally in getting greater involvement from streaming majors like Amazon.
NFL games will continue to air on CBS (owned by ViacomCBS which owns the Ten network here), Fox, NBC and ESPN (ESPN owner Disney, has the streaming service, Disney + and ESPN has its own streaming service).
ABC, which is also owned by Disney, returns to the broadcast roster after missing out in the previous three contracts (ABC decades ago pioneered the Monday Night Football concept to break away from weekend programming).
ABC will have a limited schedule of games as well as returning to the Super Bowl rotation (two games) for the first time since the 2005 season. ESPN’s deal was scheduled to end this year, while the others expired a year later, but ESPN will have a bridge deal for 2022.
The new broadcast deal for Amazon starts next year and the new yearly total is an increase of 80% on the $US5.9 billion the NFL received for the 2020-21 season. The new full price deals with ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and ESPN start in 2023 and run through to 2033.
CBS, Fox and NBC will pay more than $US2 billion each to hold onto their games, with NBC paying slightly less than CBS and Fox.
ESPN will pay about $US2.7 billion a year to continue airing Monday Night Football, but also to be added into the rotation to broadcast the Super Bowl beginning in 2026.
The NFL has not yet announced who will broadcast Sunday Ticket, a subscription service that lets fans watch out-of-market weekend games that are not broadcast nationally.
DirecTV has the rights to that service through 2022. DirecTV is owned by AT&T which has sold a part interest to private equity and seems to be trying to lessen its involvement in satellite broadcasting.
Amazon has partnered with other broadcasters to stream Thursday night games since 2017, but it will take over the entire package from Fox, which has had it since 2018 after CBS and NBC shared the package for two seasons.
As a trial, Amazon streamed a Week 16 Saturday game between the San Francisco 49ers and Arizona Cardinals late last year. NFL games played in London have also been streamed by services such as Yahoo and ESPN.
Besides the two Super Bowls, ESPN and ABC will also gain the rights to flex games to “Monday Night Football,” a right only previously given to NBC when flex scheduling was introduced in 2006 (That allows for games to be pushed to another night if network programming might hit ratings).
The new deal will likely see a 17th game added to the season for the 32 teams. That will generate billions of dollars a year in extra revenues and is one of the reasons why the new deal saw the 80% jump in income.
And the new deal also means the NFL will be able, over time to more than recoup the estimated $US4 billion in losses from not having maximum capacity attendance at games in 2020 because of Covid.
