The NFL is the clear king of American sports, but audiences can change quickly. So the league is increasingly looking at how to make it easier for audiences to consume football content.
In recent years, the NFL has struck deals on exclusive games on Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Peacock and — reportedly starting this fall — YouTube. The league is planting seeds for 2029, when it is widely expected to opt out of its current broadcast rights deals and strike new pacts.
At that time, the Monday night, Thursday night and Sunday afternoon windows would come open for the first time since 2021. And for the first time ever, there is a real chance that the traditional 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. ET windows could move off broadcast TV.
In a new interview with the Wall Street Journal, NFL chief media and business officer Brian Rolapp sidestepped a question about the looming opt-out in 2029, echoing commissioner Roger Goodell’s comments about prioritizing “reach.”
“I don’t know what the future looks like, but I think where we will start is where our fans are spending the majority of their time,” Rolapp told WSJ’s Joe Flint. “We’re going to pick our partners based on their ability to promote our game, produce quality telecasts and achieve reach.”
If the goal is for the NFL to align itself with viewing habits, YouTube and Netflix are no-brainers. The NFL has a deal with YouTube on NFL Sunday Ticket. Netflix broadcast its first live NFL doubleheader last year on Christmas Day.
However, in the same interview, Rolapp reiterated the value of traditional television. The vast majority of NFL games in the regular and postseason air on Fox and CBS, in addition to NBC’s package of Sunday Night Football, playoffs and Super Bowls.
“Broadcast television clearly has been and still is the bedrock of our media strategy,” Rolapp said.
“It’s been that way for 50 years, because our model is still driven by reach. That’s the religious principle. That being said, we do see all the changes that are happening in media, so achieving that reach is more complicated as people spend more and more time on digital platforms. ”
In the past, Goodell has emphasized the importance of putting games on platforms on which fans already spend time. Last year, the commissioner also explained the league’s thinking on deploying its own power to help grow certain platforms, like NBC’s Peacock or ESPN+.
But the NFL is mostly interested in the biggest platforms. In other words, don’t expect an exclusive NFL game on Roku Channel or Apple TV+ any time soon.
“At the end of the day, the number one thing we look for is reach,” Goodell told Pat McAfee ahead of Week 1 in 2024. “If someone paid us a lot of money and had a very small audience, we wouldn’t do it because that doesn’t help us much.”
The truth is likely that the NFL does not know exactly how its next package will look. But it is now in business with just about every major linear and streaming network in the U.S., along with several big deals overseas.
So the NFL will have many options in 2029 if it opts out. For Fox and CBS, those negotiations could be a matter of life and death. The streamers are sure to exert pressure in the live programming arms race.
Four years out, the public negotiations have already begun.