Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon
Katherine Taylor | Reuters
According to people familiar with Amazon, Amazon wants to be the exclusive producer of the National Football League of Thursday games starting in 2023, but the NFL may decide to keep certain games on the NFL Network.
Amazon is in talks with the league to pay about $ 1 billion for an entire season of exclusive games, outside the local TV markets of the two teams playing, said the people, who asked not to be named because the conversations are private. The talks continue and no decision has been made, the people said.
In a new deal, Amazon will be responsible for all production costs, and will still have to pay a local broadcaster to produce the game for home markets, as the NFL wants the games to be broadcast on local TV on Thursday night in participating teams’ home markets.
The NFL network, which is usually packaged as part of expensive pay-TV bundles, has the requirements of pay-TV distributors to carry a certain number of games exclusively. The Wall Street Journal, which previously reported Amazon’s interest, reported on Wednesday that the NFL network’s transactions require it to broadcast only five games. With the NFL wanting to add an 18th week, the league could potentially give the NFL network enough Saturday games and other clippings to reach the boundaries of the cable network without dropping in on Thursday, one of the folks said.
Still, the NFL may decide to increase the value of NFL Network is a higher priority than giving a full Thursday games to Amazon. The league is still considering proposals to simulate Amazon’s Thursday games on the NFL network or to split Thursday’s games between Amazon and the NFL Network, two of the people said.
Amazon will not pay nearly $ 1 billion for a complete package of games that are not completely exclusive. Amazon is open to an arrangement where games with brands that are simulated for less money on NFL Network get. It is also open to a package where it gets less exclusive games for less money.
“This is a beautiful watershed event for the TV industry,” LightShed analyst Rich Greenfield told CNBC today. “The fact that you can now get games on Thursday nights without having a local television – no antenna will work if you are outside the home markets.”
The deal would build on Amazon’s three-year deal with the NFL to broadcast 12 Thursday games in the 2020, 2021 and 2022 seasons on its Prime Video streaming service. With the deal, Amazon can broadcast only one game each season. Last year, it was a Week 16 game between the Arizona Cardinals and the San Francisco 49ers. According to people familiar with the matter, Fox’s football deal was finalized on Thursday night in 2022.
The NFL was careful about handing over broadcasting rights to streaming services. The league is close to concluding agreements with its current TV partners – Disney (which owns ESPN and ABC), ViacomCBS, Comcast’s NBCUniversal and Fox – for packages on Sunday and Monday.
Streaming is still becoming the most important form of viewing for millions of Americans and can be achieved worldwide, unlike traditional pay-TV. Several pay-TV distributors have contacted transactions with Amazon Prime Video to make its programming available on set-top boxes, limiting the friction for the millions of Americans who still pay for linear pay-TV bundles from operators such as Comcast and AT&T.
Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, which is the parent company of CNBC.