Recently, talks were happening for the negotiation of a Thursday Night Football schedule. Despite eager suitors in Comcast/NBCUniversal, Fox Sports, and Turner Sports negotiations have beenput on hold, a perhaps a byproduct of the NFL’s failure to get the players’ union to agree to an expanded season.
“It’s not likely that we would do it in the next year,” said NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. “We’re going to continue our discussions with our current partners and evaluate aspects of our new labor agreement as part of that.”
“I was sure that things would start heating up once the ESPN deal was out of the way,” said one programming executive who asked not to be named, mentioning the $15.5 billion extension of ESPN’s Monday Night Football contract. “My understanding was we’d resume talks as soon as that was off the books and that someone would have a deal by early, mid-October.”
The reasoning is believed to be a byproduct of a priority shift for the NFL. “The way it looks now, the league will probably want to close out its renewals [with CBS, NBC, and Fox] before they come back to Thursday night,” the executive said. “It’s a little disappointing, but this is the NFL. When they’re ready to sit down and talk, we’ll be right there with them.”
All three broadcast deals are set to expire in 2013; Fox’s agreement is worth $720.3 million per year, while CBS’ has $619.8 million and NBC pays $603 million per season for the rights to air Sunday Night Football. Without being able to secure two extra weeks worth of football from the players, and therefore being able to increase games without taking them away from the broadcast partners, the NFL has to change tack.
“The NFL doesn’t want to lead things off with [CBS Sports chairman] Sean McManus or [Fox Sports chairman] David Hill by saying, ‘We want more money, and oh, by the way, we’re taking some of your games,’” said one sports TV executive. “Until they get all those legacy deals squared away, Thursday night is going to have to wait.”
Source: Adweek.com
