Would the NFL ever charge fans to watch the Super Bowl? Meadowlark Media’s John Skipper says it is coming. He said that it could make the league billions more dollars every year.
“I don’t know how many households — I assume it’s half the households who watched — if only a quarter of them are willing to pay $250 to have a party at their house, it would still get you into the billions of dollars for a single game, and that is the single best way I can think of for the NFL to increase their annual revenue stake for their clubs, is to make the Super Bowl a pay-per-view event,” he said earlier this week on The Big Suey podcast.
The Greg Hill Show discussed Skipper’s proposal on WEEI Thursday morning. Host Greg Hill said that if he was asked to pay $250 to watch the Super Bowl, he would expect big changes to the broadcast.
“If I’m gonna pay for it, I don’t want any commercials,” he said. “Do you think they are gonna do away with that money?”
The rest of the cast was split on whether the NFL would actually take that step. Producer Chris Curtis was adamant that he expects the league to go down this path. He said when they do, he would expect the other three major American sports leagues to follow suit and make fans pay to see their championship events.
He suggested that despite the popularity of Super Bowl commercials, a pay-per-view event could give fans more access to the game with microphones in huddles and audio of the communication between coaches and quarterbacks being played during times the game would traditionally go to break.
Floyd Mayweather’s exhibition fight with Jake Paul drew 2 million pay-per-view buys. Using that as a base, Curtis suggested a Super Bowl could draw 50 million buys on pay-per-view. If the price tag were set at $250, 50 million buys would result in $12.5 billion in revenue.
Co-host Jermaine Wiggins noted that type of revenue increase would be hard for the NFL to ignore.
“They need more money,” Hill joked. “Roger Goodell is paid $60 million per year. I don’t know how he makes ends meet.”
