Update: Comcast has passed along an updated statement to Awful Announcing: “Disney/ESPN acquired NFL Network and Red Zone just months ago and are already demanding double the fees for the same content. Their distribution demands would also make millions more pay for a channel they don’t watch. We remain open to continuing to talk and reach a fair deal for our customers.”
NFL Network moved from league ownership to ESPN as part of the equity deal that saw the NFL take a 10% ownership stake in the network. And they are bringing a carriage dispute with them.
NFL Network and the linear RedZone Channel saw agreements with Comcast expire this week. Now that the networks are under the auspices of ESPN, it will be Bristol that is charged with negotiating a new deal.
It’s the second time in three years that NFL Network has disappeared from Comcast after a 2023 carriage dispute. Thankfully it was resolved almost instantly after NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and Comcast CEO Brian Roberts got directly involved.
A Comcast spokesperson told Cord Cutters about the new outage, “Our contract to carry NFL Network and NFL Red Zone has expired, and we’re in discussions with the new owner, Disney/ESPN, about our future carriage of the network.”
From the ESPN/NFL Network perspective, a Disney spokesperson told Awful Announcing, “We understand how disappointing and disruptive this is for football fans who have lost access to NFL Network and RedZone Channel as part of their Xfinity TV lineup. We proposed keeping these channels available while we continued good-faith negotiations, but unfortunately Comcast declined and took them down. Despite this, we remain fully committed to reaching a fair agreement and restoring access to our best-in-class NFL programming as quickly as possible.”
Disney and Comcast quickly reached their own agreement last fall to avoid the plight of the extended YouTube TV blackout of Disney networks in the middle of football season that caused several games to be missed. However, the acquisition of NFL Network and RedZone were not finalized until this year, so they have to be newly negotiated through ESPN now that the original agreements with the league have come to an end.
If there’s any good news for football fans, it’s that this time of year is about as low stress as it can be for missing NFL Network programming with the NFL Draft complete and the preseason not for a few months. That certainly increases the leverage on the Comcast side, but it will slowly tilt the other way towards ESPN and the NFL as football season approaches. Hopefully we don’t get too close to that cliff, though, and a decent compromise can be worked out by both sides.
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