Ahead of potentially transformative series of media rights negotiations, the NFL is making a notable shift in its approach to at least one game.
John Ourand of Puck reported Thursday that rights to next season’s NFL International Series game from Melbourne, Australia, will now be packaged with four or five other games rather sold individually. That is a noted shift for the league, which had already begun soliciting bids for the game and received what Ourand described as “strong interest.”
The Melbourne game is expected to take place in Week 1 of the season, either on the night before or after the league’s annual Kickoff Game. It will be the third-straight Week 1 International Series game, following games in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the past two seasons. Rights to those Brazil games were sold individually, with Peacock acquiring rights in 2024 and YouTube doing so the following year.
It would be fair to expect any package to include the game windows that were freed up as part of the NFL’s deal to sell NFL Network to Disney. NFL Network airs seven games per season, but as part of that sale, four of those will now come from ESPN’s existing inventory. That leaves four windows for the league to sell on the open market.
Most of those NFL Network games have been part of the International Series. The NFL has been widely expected to sell a package consisting of international games at some point in the near future, and this season will have more than enough inventory — a record nine International Series games — to create an international-only package and still have some of those games left over for its other partners. (At least one International Series game next season is expected to air in a Sunday afternoon window on CBS or FOX.)
But it is far too early to tell what the makeup of the potential package would be. The league could still decide to keep the bulk of its International Series games on NFL Network. It is also exploring additional holiday games this season — including one on the day before Thanksgiving and an additional game on Black Friday — and would presumably sell rights to those games either individually or as part of a package.
With the NFL planning to renegotiate all of its media rights deals by the start of next season — years ahead of schedule — it is possible that the league could free up even more windows as part of talks with CBS and FOX in particular, which through their regional Sunday afternoon windows own more game inventory than the other rightsholders.
There is no guarantee the NFL sells all of its additional inventory in a single package, or any package at all. Nothing in the Ourand report rules out the possibility of the league continuing to sell rights for individual games. Any combination of inventory that allows the league to maximize its media rights would seem to be on the table.
NFL EVP/media distribution Hans Schroeder told Alex Sherman of CNBC during Super Bowl week last month that the league plans to use its expedited media rights negotiations to talk not just with its incumbent partners, but also with prospective bidders. He expects the league will “probably have a lot of different people that want to have a conversation.”