Former NFL player Christian Fauria said on his WEEI show, Gresh & Fauria, that he believes the NFL will soon own and control their own television and streaming rights . Fauria and his partner, Andy Gresh were discussing the recent reports of Amazon Prime Video paying $120 million (or $150 million depending on which report you read) to stream one exclusive playoff game.
“It’s just one game and it’s $120 million dollars,” Gresh said. “I just go back to, this is where it’s going. At what point is the NFL tapped domestically?…I just wonder how do you extract more from the domestic marketplace? How do you find a way to squeeze more blood out of the rock? There are no more TV networks to go to. The streaming services are what they are, but at the end of the day, isn’t owning it yourself and going to pay-per-view the only real remaining revenue stream for the NFL here in America?”
Fauria said he sees the NFL potentially going all in. “If I’m the league, does it make more financial sense by selling off a game here, a game here, to five different partners and really trying to fleece them…making it realy competitive, and having them overpay. Or, to farm it out ourselves, like to really own everything ourselves. One platform that we own, that we regulate that we control and we can reach a world-wide audience and they all go to one particular [place]…one platform that everyone goes to and they pay a fee. Eventually, I see them icing out all their partners.”
Gresh took a different point of view, noting how desperate the networks will be to keep the NFL programming and all that would be involved if the NFL took over all of the broadcasting responsibilities. “I don’t think it’s going to get that deep because then the NFL would start to get in to paying production costs, flying people around, hiring crews. If the NFL just housed it on their own, they are then just incurring the expense that they have had the luxury of having someone else incur, on top of paying them a ton of money. To me, the only carve out can only be the Super Bowl and these sort of standalone deals.”
Fauria then added how he can not only see the NFL taking it all on themselves, mainly due to the owner’s greed, but added he can also see the addition of at least two more teams which would create more inventory for the league to sell. Gresh didn’t disagree about adding more teams, his belief, however is that adding the teams will continue to drive the price up for the broadcasting partners and the NFL may try different things with single games like the exclusively-streamed playoff game.
