A seminal change to the sports media ecosystem could be taking place with the potential immersion of Netflix into the weekly NFL broadcasting rotation when the league is able to opt out of its existing media rights deals. Netflix chief content officer Bela Bajaria recently stated that she would definitely be interested in a Sunday afternoon package of games should the company decide to move in that direction. The news led Mike Stone and Jon Jansen to discuss the viability of the streaming service becoming a destination for the games on the Tuesday edition of Costa & Jansen with Heather on 97.1 The Ticket in Detroit.
Stone explained that people know they have been “blessed” to be able to watch most professional football games free of charge.
“I don’t know that the NFL wants to go down that road of taking the most popular sport in America right now, the one that gets the most eyeballs, and taking it off of over-the-air broadcast to put it on a major part of their Sunday broadcast on streaming services,” Jansen said. Netflix recently completed the first year of a three-season deal to broadcast NFL games on Christmas Day, presenting a doubleheader that averaged more than 30 million viewers.
With the plausibility of the NFL re-engaging media companies in negotiations upon its expected opt out of the existing 11-year media rights contract reportedly worth $111 billion, there seems to be a chance that Netflix could become a new weekly destination for football fans to view the games. CBS and FOX have both been carrying Sunday afternoon games since the 1998 season, which have been free, over-the-air products.
“I don’t know if they want to, but there’s a lot of things that the NFL didn’t want to that they’ve done,” Stone countered. “They never wanted private equity firms to actually own percentages of their teams – that’s changed. Everything in the National Football League, like many other businesses in this world as we know, all they care about is how much money they can make.”
Stone assumed that the price of a Netflix subscription would be raised if the entity landed Sunday afternoon NFL rights because of the remuneration that would be paid to the league. Netflix currently has more than 300 million paid memberships for its service and forecasted a content spend of approximately $18 billion for the year. Outside of NFL games on Christmas Day, Netflix also broadcasts weekly editions of WWE Raw and recently garnered U.S. broadcasting rights for the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2027 and 2031.
“It’ll be interesting to see how does this impact Sunday Ticket, because if it’s on Sunday Ticket, which is with YouTube TV right now and streaming, if another streaming service offers those games, will they still be available on Sunday Ticket?,” Jansen asked. “Just a question – I don’t know what the answer to that is.”
“Well, the answer is if the NFL can make more money doing it that way, that’s going to be the answer,” Stone replied. “How can they make more money? That’s all it seems – I’m a little hyperbole here – that’s all they care about.”
Jansen also questioned if the popularity of the game played a factor into how much money the NFL would make aside from the broadcast fees. The league reportedly receives $2.25 billion per year from FOX and $2.1 billion per season from CBS as parts of rights packages that include Sunday afternoon games, playoff contests and two Super Bowl broadcasts each. FOX averaged 18.4 million viewers for regular-season NFL broadcasts, down 3% from the previous year, while CBS experienced a 1% year-over-year decline with an average of 19.2 million viewers watching the contests.
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