The NFL will nearly double its media revenue to more than $ 10 billion per season with new rights deals announced Thursday, including an agreement with Amazon Prime Video that gives the streaming service exclusive rights to “Thursday Night Football” starting in 2022
The league has raised $ 5.9 billion a year in its current contracts. It will earn $ 113 billion during the 11 seasons of the new deals starting in 2023, an 80% increase over the previous period, a person with direct knowledge of the contracts told The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the money figures were not disclosed.
Amazon has been working with the league since 2017 to stream games from Thursday night, but it will take over the entire package from Fox, which it has had since 2018 after CBS and NBC shared the package for two seasons. Amazon streamed a Week 16 game between the San Francisco 49ers and Arizona Cardinals last week, which was expected to see 11.2 total viewers and an average minute audience of 4.8 million. It was a record for the largest audience to stream an NFL game.
Games will continue to be broadcast on CBS, Fox, NBC and ESPN, while for the first time since the 2005 season ABC will have a limited schedule of matches, as well as the Super Bowl round (two matches). The ESPN agreement would end after 2021, while the others expired a year later, but ESPN has a bridge agreement for 2022.
With the exception of Amazon, the new deals start with the 2023 season and expire after the 2033 schedule. Games on Amazon will also be offered at broadcast stations in the cities of the participating teams, as is the case with games broadcast on ESPN and NFL Network.
In addition to the two Super Bowls, ESPN and ABC will also acquire the rights to flex games on ‘Monday Night Football’, a right previously granted to NBC when flex scheduling was introduced in 2006.
The contract also extends digital rights to the other networks. ESPN + will broadcast one of the London games and NBC’s platform “Peacock” will also have exclusive games.
With the solid new contracts, the 32 NFL teams and their players can look forward to increased salary coverage over the decade. The limit decreased by almost $ 16 million this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The broadcast partners are also aiming to get an extra game per season, which is likely to start this year. NFL owners are getting ready to implement a regular season of 17 games.
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