The NFL is America’s most popular television programming, and it’ll be looking to capitalize on that status come 2029.
That’s the year in which the league can opt out of its current media rights agreements with Amazon, CBS, ESPN, Fox, and NBC. Those deals run through the 2033 season, but the NFL can exercise an option to leave those deals after the 2029 season, if it so chooses.
And according to one report coming out of the NFL’s annual meetings in Palm Beach, Florida this week, it is a near certainty the league will do just that. Per Eric Fisher of Front Office Sports, the NFL is a “virtual lock” to opt out of its contracts, citing multiple sources.
That should come as no surprise. Earlier this year, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell referred to the league’s 2029 option as “incredibly valuable,” given the league believes its current rights agreements are undervalued.
In that sense, Goodell and the league are right.
If one looks at the latest set of rights deals inked by the NBA, a league which is not nearly the same viewership draw that the NFL is, one would be surprised to see certain networks, like NBC, actually paying more for its package of NBA games than it does for its Sunday Night Football package.
And given that mass viewership events are few and far between these days, the NFL sees themselves as the most valuable programming in television, full stop.
“All that data is positive for the value of sports media in general, and for the NFL specifically,” NFL chief media officer Brian Rolapp told Front Office Sports when prompted with data supporting the growing value of sports rights. “I don’t think it’s a mystery that as media fragments, there are very few programming options that aggregate large audiences. Sports are at the top there, and the NFL is at the top of that.”
In February, the Super Bowl delivered a record audience for the NFL, and there’s no signs of that slowing down.
2029 will likely prove a pivotal year for the future of sports media, and the future of traditional media companies in general. For networks like Fox and CBS, NFL programming is the lifeblood of its business model. Without the league, those legacy companies lose nearly all of the leverage they have to demand high carriage and retransmission fees from distributors.
As tech companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google continue to enter the market for live sports rights, with much deeper pockets than traditional media companies, retaining the NFL in 2029 will become a life-or-death endeavor for some. That very dynamic is what makes the NFL certain it can extract maximum value from its current (or future) media partners when it exercises its opt-out.