The National Football League is reportedly nearing signing new broadcasting rights deals with media partners that could see Amazon carry many games exclusively and TV networks pay as much as double their current rate.
New agreements could be in place as early as next week, The Wall Street Journal said, citing anonymous sources. The TV deals for the league’s Sunday and Monday franchises with Fox, CBS, NBC and ESPN are likely to run for as long as 11 years, the report said.
ESPN’s deal is likely to go into effect after the 2021-22 season while the Fox, CBS and NBC agreements would kick in after the 2022-23 season.
The Post reported in December that Amazon was a frontrunner for the Thursday night package, and that overall, the NFL is expected to amass more than $100 billion for all its TV rights deals with its partners.
A deal with Amazon would result in a significant number of Thursday night games exclusively on its Prime Video platform and represent the league’s biggest move into streaming, the report said. Those games wouldn’t be available on traditional TV outside of the local markets of the two teams playing.
If Amazon’s deal is completed, it wouldn’t take effect until after the 2022 season, when Fox’s current pact for Thursday night football expires. Fox is now paying $660 million a season for that package, The Journal said, adding that Amazon’s deal could reach $1 billion.
Fox shares a common owner with News Corp., the publisher of The Post.
Currently, Amazon pays between $75 million and $100 million to stream Thursday games, the report noted. Elsewhere, Fox’s average fee for its Sunday afternoon games is expected to jump from $1.1 billion to $2 billion. ViacomCBS will likely see its fee per season for Sunday afternoon games to rise to the $2 billion range from $1 billion.
NBC-owned Comcast is also expected to get a price hike of more than double from the average $960 million it pays, to about $2 billion. Meanwhile, Disney’s ESPN will also get a big price hike, but the amount is still in flux.
The NFL has yet to renegotiate its Sunday Ticket package, which allows fans to watch any game on Sunday afternoon. AT&T’s DirecTV has that package through 2022 at a yearly price of $1.5 billion.
AT&T boss John Stankey has been lukewarm on Sunday Ticket, noting that it isn’t the growth vehicle it once was and isn’t critical to DirecTV anymore. Last week, AT&T struck a deal to sell a 30 percent stake in DirecTV to private-equity firm TPG for $1.8 billion.