The decades-long rhythm of Sunday afternoon NFL games could eventually “evolve” beyond broadcast television, per one of the league’s top executives.
NFL EVP/media distribution Hans Schroeder appeared to float the possibility that the NFL’s Sunday afternoon schedule could “evolve” to include digital platforms in a recent interview with John Ourand of Puck. In comments that were originally made at an event last month, Schroeder suggested that a digital partner could approach Sunday games differently, as the “whole idea of how we regionalize and distribute on Sunday afternoon largely is tied to how broadcast and broadcast infrastructure works.”
While Schroeder stressed that broadcast television is will always be “really critical” to the league because of its reach, he prefaced that by predicting that there are “going to be a lot of different interests and opportunities for us.” Schroeder: “There’s going to be ways in which the platforms and the partners and the interests we have give us different options to consider.”
It is unclear exactly what form those options might take, but Schroeder said that “the things we’re thinking about are a lot of different configurations that don’t exactly have to map just to what it looks like today.”
Sunday afternoon NFL games have aired regionally on any two of FOX, CBS and NBC dating back to the 1970 merger, and for most of the nearly 60 years since that point, they have been allocated based on conference affiliation. But the league has largely gone away from conference affiliation for Sunday games, creating a flexibility that Schroeder touted to Ourand as part of the reason behind the NFL’s success in the ratings.
Could that flexibility result in the NFL splitting its Sunday afternoon slate three ways? Or, as suggested by MoffettNathanson analyst Robert Fishman earlier this year, carving out a few Sunday afternoon games as part of a “premium package” for a Netflix? As might go without saying, Schroeder did not give specifics. But if the NFL is open to an evolution of its Sunday afternoon slate, it is hard to imagine what if anything would be off the table.
The NFL is expected to ask its media partners to reopen their rights deals as early as next year, well ahead of the league’s contractual opt-out in 2029, but all indications are that those talks would be to tack on additional years to the existing deals — rather than to negotiate entirely new contracts that would allow for an overhaul of the current packages.
Schroder also discussed the long-rumored idea of the NFL carving out a package of International Series games, saying that it “makes sense” in part because there are few other opportunities for the league to package new game inventory. An international package could also grow the league’s exposure beyond even the European markets in which games are played, as Schroeder noted that the European-based international games generally coincide with primetime hours in Asia.