There are a lot of things we need to worry about during the next few years. Solar flares. Climate change. Famine. Literacy rates. All things that should be on the front burner. You know what we don’t have to worry about? The Super Bowl ever being a pay-per-view event.
Former ESPN President John Skipper raised eyebrows last week after saying the NFL could make billions by turning the Super Bowl into a pay-per-view event. When someone of his stature says that — heck, I introduced the man as “former ESPN President” which has enough gravitas behind it before you peruse his professional accomplishments — it holds weight. A lot of weight.
And Skipper is absolutely correct, the NFL could make billions by doing that. But they won’t. And there’s a simple reason for that: they’re already making billions from the Super Bowl.
When you look at the new television contracts signed by the league after the 2021 season, ESPN is now paying $2.7 billion per year for their package, which will now include a Super Bowl it didn’t receive in its old package. That number is $500 million more than FOX, and $700 million more than NBC. And do you know why ESPN was willing to pay it? Because it gave them a Super Bowl. So…and the going rate for a Super Bowl is an extra $500 million per year over a 10-year deal? I’m no math professor, but that’s doing ok from the league’s perspective.
And guess what? FOX, NBC, and CBS are also paying a yearly premium for the rights to the Super Bowl in years they don’t have it, either. So, if you think about it that way, the league is already making $1.5 billion off one game to begin with. Add in ticket sales, sponsorship dollars, the halftime show, etc…the league doesn’t have to worry about finding ways to make more money from that event. It’s every other event they’ll focus on.
Because sometimes — and I know this is antithesis of everything we know about the NFL — the league is somewhat competent and understands that it is about scale rather than profit. 113 million people watched the Super Bowl (which is probably a lowball estimate, honestly). ESPN is willing to fork over an additionally $500 million every year for a decade because 113 million people will be tuned into the nation’s largest television event twice in that decade. And conceivably, if a 30-second commercial went for $7 million in 2023, what does that number look like in 2026 and 2030? $10 million? $12 million?
Scale matters to the NFL and it matters to the league’s television partners. Almost for that reason alone we’ll never see a Super Bowl PPV. Because ESPN, ABC, NBC, and FOX aren’t going to pay the league in the neighborhood of $24 billion a piece to stick the event on their streaming services and make people fork over what Skipper estimated at $250 per household.
People are as frugal as ever. That attitude is why the cable television bundle has been decimated: ‘I’m no longer paying for things I don’t use’. And I think you’d be hard pressed to find 50 million Americans who will pay $250 to watch commercials — that would absolutely still exist in a Super Bowl PPV — just so they can chat with their co-workers about it on Monday morning.
I completely understand John Skipper’s thought process. He’s dead on. The NFL is an ever-hungry corporate monolith with only one goal in mind: make as much cash as possible. And his background is in a similar position: make ESPN as much cash as possible. It’s a logical stance for him to take.
But even the league and its owners are smart enough to recognize that the quest for more dollars isn’t best served by limiting eyeballs on its marquee event. There will be countless other avenues for the NFL to scratch out an extra billion here or there, but limiting the audience of the Super Bowl won’t be the way they do it.
Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing daily news stories, features, and opinion columns. He joined Barrett Media in 2022 after a decade leading several radio brands in several formats, as well as a 5-year stint working in local television. In addition to his work with Barrett Media, he is a radio and TV play-by-play broadcaster. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
