The timeline is accelerating for the NFL’s expedited media rights negotiations.
John Ourand of Puck reported Thursday that the NFL is now believed to want its new media rights deals completed before the new season begins in September, earlier than the fall timeframe that had been previously reported. The league is expected to negotiate and announce its new deals one-by-one, starting with Paramount and then Fox, Ourand wrote, with all of them taking effect immediately.
Technically, the NFL does not have the ability to exit its current media rights deals until after the 2029 season at the earliest (2030 for ESPN), but there is little expectation that any of the league’s partners will oppose the expedited talks. According to Ourand, it is believed that the new contracts will run through the 2033 or 2034 seasons, meaning that the existing rightsholders can lock up NFL rights for the next seven or eight years by agreeing to the early talks. Currently, the networks are guaranteed only four additional seasons if they choose to wait for the league’s contractual opt-out.
But the early talks are likely to come with some sacrifices, and not just the obvious financial ones. The NFL is expected to use the opening created by the negotiations to carve out inventory for new packages. NFL EVP/media distribution Hans Schroeder told Alex Sherman of CNBC last month that the league plans to engage not just its existing partners in its upcoming talks, but additional suitors who are on the outside looking in. Schroeder: “We’re going to listen and probably have a lot of different people that want to have that want to have a conversation with us.”
The league is already believed to be shopping the four game windows that were freed up as part of its now-completed sale of NFL Network to ESPN, with Austin Karp and Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal reporting last week that YouTube is among the frontrunners for that package.
The incumbent rights partners are likely to end up in the position of paying more for less, but given the ability to guarantee that they will remain in the NFL business into the middle of the next decade, it is unlikely that any will turn up their nose at the chance.