The NFL is reportedly receiving interest in a media rights package for one of two games, which could include the Week 1 game taking place in São Paulo, Brazil featuring the Los Angeles Chargers against a team to be determined. With the possibility of the AFC champion Kansas City Chiefs taking part in the contest, it could increase the value of the contest after the team played eight games on national television last season. YouTube TV, Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon have all had interest in this package, according to a report from Ben Fischer and Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal.
Citing sources within the report, Fischer and Karp divulged that some are calling YouTube a “favorite” in this situation. YouTube has the broadcast rights for the NFL Sunday Ticket out-of-market games package for the last two seasons under a seven-year deal reportedly worth a collective $14 billion. Since YouTube is retransmitting game feeds being broadcast by CBS and FOX, it would need to hire its own talent and production staff from another rightsholder or construct it individually. A similar premise would exist for Warner Bros. Discovery, which has not held rights to the NFL since 1997.
The NFL held a Week 1 game in São Paulo, Brazil last season between the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers that averaged 14.7 million viewers airing exclusively on Peacock and also through over-the-air simulcasts in home marketplaces. This marked the second-best streaming audience for Peacock behind its exclusive NFL Wild Card Game that accrued an average minute audience of 23 million viewers in January 2024. A subsequent study from Antenna divulged that Peacock retained 71% of users to its platform seven weeks later who subscribed in a three-day window surrounding the broadcast.
Television advertising Upfront events for YouTube, Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon will be taking place in May from New York City. This is around the time that the league could release its schedule, with Mike North, the vice president of broadcast planning and scheduling for the NFL, conveying that the reveal could be “somewhere” between May 13 and May 15. If YouTube or Warner Bros. Discovery was to acquire the rights for this game, it would bring the total number of NFL broadcast entities next season to nine, according to Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch.
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