The NFL Doesn’t Care if You Can’t Watch Games on Peacock, Just as Long As It Makes Money

“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” says movie character Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas in Wall Street. There were many fans left thinking the NFL shared that thought. Especially after the game between the Bills and Chargers last Saturday was shown exclusively on NBC’s streaming platform Peacock.

If you didn’t live in Buffalo or the LA area, you had to either go to a bar or fork over more of your hard-earned money to yet another streaming service.

The NFL is a multi-billion-dollar entity, and at the surface, it seemed unnecessary to reach for more money from fans’ pockets. Unnecessary was an understatement when it came to the immediate reaction from fans on various social media platforms, voicing their displeasure.

“NFL decision-makers have been flat-out INSULTING to NFL fans,” wrote another. “Insistence on Thursday games every week. Giving Amazon a Black Friday game to manipulate us into staying home & ordering from Prime. Partnering with Peacock to manipulate us into subscribing. A monopoly on Christmas… All to make a cheap buck.”

Add to the mix, a ton of technical difficulties in the maiden voyage. Fans were not happy about the color and picture quality of the stream itself.

Sounds like a well-oiled machine so far, huh? The problems technically and with exclusivity were probably greater than expected by Peacock, but that’s the chance you take when you take a chance like this.

Fans who weren’t used to the idea of the game not being on broadcast television were confused by and large. That’s because the game earlier in the day between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cincinnati Bengals was on NBC. Some fans just figured that this would be the doubleheader game and also be shown on NBC. Nope.

How could you expect fans to be happy about a decision to take away a game, and coming soon a playoff game from their regular viewing habits? Considering most of us pay for cable and pay enough already for that just to see a game for “free”, now you have to shell out another $5.99 a month to see two games?

It starts to add up. YouTube TV is the new home of the NFL Sunday Ticket, regular prices for the service started at $299 for subscribers and $399 for non-subscribers. YouTube also offered a monthly payment option this year, for subscribers and non, at $74.75 and $109.75 respectively. I’m no economist, but that’s a lot of cash to be spending on football. Fans feel like they’re being nickeled and dimed to the point where they are losing the will to watch and pay.

The game they just aired is being tested as a dry run for the league’s first-ever streamed playoff game. That will air on Peacock on January 13, 2024, during the Wild Card Weekend. That doesn’t give the folks at Peacock a lot of time to fix whatever was technically wrong with the first broadcast.

The NFL and Peacock are touting last weekend’s game for producing two broadcast firsts. We know the first of the firsts is the exclusive stream, but the second was for the ‘commercial-free’ 4^th quarter. As a result, NBC said, fans will get 12 additional minutes of game coverage. Great, huh? Hardly a consolation for those who couldn’t see it right? It’s kind of like the old, if a tree falls in the forest and there’s nobody there to hear it does it really make a sound?

I get that the league sees what’s going on with Amazon Prime Video broadcasts and how well they’ve done without being on broadcast or cable TV.  So of course, another network was going to try and get into the fray and it’s NBC’s turn.

“We said, ‘Hey, let’s try and be innovative – what can we do?,’” NBC Sports President Rick Cordella said during a phone interview with The Buffalo News last Thursday. “We can go to the studio to talk about Sunday’s games. We can talk in the context of the live game. The idea is, ‘Let’s stay on the action more than we typically would on a Sunday Night Football game.

“Sports is often used as a catalyst to get people in the door, but the hope is once they’re in the door, they see all of the other great content we have to offer,” Cordella said to The Buffalo News.

Ok, but who is going to spend that kind of money monthly when a true sports fan only wants to watch a couple of games each year? Not many, probably. When is enough, enough?

Before you answer that question Big Ten fans, understand that NBC Sports has gained the rights to exclusively stream up to 47 Big Ten Men’s Basketball games this season. This being the inaugural season, Peacock will carry 34 games, 32 regular season and 2 games will exclusively stream during the early-round games of the Big Ten Tournament.

So, this isn’t a one-off experiment. This is reality. As far as the NFL is concerned, this is such an unneeded intrusion into the customer’s wallet. How much is enough when it comes to ways of squeezing every dollar out of your fan base? The NFL makes billions off its network partners already, so why appear even more greedy than this league that pays its commissioner $44 million a year?

From the network perspective, I actually understand some of it. Trying to grow and diversify in the changing landscape of the media is understandable. Given the issues with RSNs across baseball and basketball, executives have to be a little concerned about satisfying a board of directors and keeping the cash flow coming. These days that flow comes from streaming.

In the non-sports domain there’s Magnolia, Discovery+, and just about every other plus you can think of.  In sports, there’s ESPN+ and others that have followed suit to appeal to younger demographics that prefer to watch things on devices rather than on their televisions. Diversification of the audience seems to be what some of these networks are trying to achieve by switching some programming to exclusive apps or subscription platforms.

I’ve got an idea for these companies. How about using your app/platform for good rather than its perceived evil? Offer me something. It has to be a little more than a “commercial-free 4^th Quarter”, I mean come on.

How about this? Before you decide it’s time to start exclusively streaming things, why don’t you offer me a free, that’s not a misprint, free preview to watch a game and see what it’s all about?

I want to see what you have to offer, maybe it’s worth it for me to join, maybe I’ll pass, but give me an option with a preview for free.

That’s an opportunity to stream on the app/platform and on broadcast/cable television at the same time. This way I get to find out what’s different about the app than a normal broadcast.  

Then give me more as a subscriber. Maybe it’s an ‘alternate’ broadcast of sorts. Yeah, I know, been there done that, but I’ve got to get something out of this for $5.99 a month. Bring me different camera angles, mic’d up stuff, something value-added. Differentiate yourself from the everyday broadcast or the other platforms that are exclusively streaming games. Maybe grow and develop a new broadcast team?

Offer a different pricing structure for a “sports tier”. Perhaps that would include another aspect of the platform in order to entice a viewer to spend more if he/she wants. It would be a good way to get a newer audience member more comfortable with your app.

Actually, wait, I have a better idea. Just stop this nonsense and let me watch the NFL on television.  For free.

Andy Masur

Andy Masur is a columnist for BSM and works for WGN Radio as an anchor and play-by-play announcer. He also teaches broadcasting at the Illinois Media School. During his career he has called games for the Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres and Chicago White Sox. He can be found on Twitter @Andy_Masur1 or you can reach him by email at Andy@Andy-Masur.com.