In 2021, the National Football League signed an 11-year media rights deal price $111 billion. In July, the National Basketball Association signed its own 11-year deal price $77 billion.
What's next? Well, not anytime soon.
While the Ultimate Fighting Championship and Formula 1's contracts expire in 2025, the overwhelming majority of major college and skilled sports have recently signed long-term media rights deals with U.S. television networks and streamers.
Welcome to the lull in sports media rights. Or: the calm before the storm.
The NFL can opt out of its current contract with all of its media partners – except Disneywhich has a rather different contract structure – after the 2028-29 season. By that time, driven by the pace of change at the biggest media corporations, the whole landscape could look significantly different than it does today, dramatically changing the quantity of revenue leagues generate and who pays them.
“Anyone who tells you with any degree of certainty whether the NFL will pull out or not is crazy,” said Daniel Cohen, executive vp of world media legal counsel at Octagon. “There's so much you can't predict even two years in advance, let alone six.”
The NFL's decision to stop broadcasting Sunday afternoons continues to be years away, but it surely represents the subsequent tectonic shift that may affect the balance of power within the media. It is feasible that the NFL will determine to renew contracts with long-standing Sunday afternoon media providers comparable to fox And Paramount Global CBS prefers streamers like Apple, Amazon, Google's YouTube and even Netflix.
This will even be a crucial consider evaluating future NFL teams. On Thursday, CNBC will release its official list of 2024 NFL team rankings, which can include all 32 skilled franchises.
The changing media
Given the present state of the media, with Outstanding Global Agreement to merge with Skydance Media by mid-2025, Warner Bros. Discovery actively seek partners to create scaling opportunities and share content costs, and Netflix If the NFL gets into live sports by buying NFL games on Christmas Day, the potential bidders for the games 4 to 5 years from now may very well be very different than they’re today, which can determine how way more the NFL can get in its next rights deal.
“There will probably be companies that don't exist today that will merge and create new competing bidders,” said Neal Pilson, former president of CBS Sports and founding father of sports media consulting firm Pilson Communications. “Other deals, like the NBA's, are a data point, but the NFL is its own marketplace. The programming is the honey. Everything is driven by the popularity of the NFL.”
Another factor that may determine how much sports rights deals will increase in the long run will probably be the state of the dwindling pay-TV bundle. According to a recent report by MoffettNathanson, 4 million pay-TV customers have been lost up to now this yr, “an incredible number for just six months.”
Live sports have long been the glue that holds all of it together, and the vast majority of viewers still come from traditional television slightly than streaming.
The economics of the bundle – still a money cow for content providers like Disney and Comcast's NBCUniversal – have been pushing for rights increases for a long time. At the identical time, streaming continues to be not profitable for many media corporations.
Traditionally, the reach of broadcast networks, especially in rural areas that also lack universal high-speed web, has led the NFL to value Fox, Disney, NBCUniversal and CBS – all of which have their very own broadcast networks. Most NFL games are broadcast by national networks.
The NBA has also expanded its partnership with Warner Bros. Discoverywhich doesn’t have its own broadcast network, with NBCUniversal, which does.
But in 4 years, the NFL may now not view television as essential but as anachronistic, given the continued shift to streaming and the deeper pockets of major tech corporations.
On the opposite hand, if streamers turn into the only real distributor of sports broadcasts, they are going to have all of the market power, which could lead on to a decline in rankings.
“If you put everything on the streaming providers and the traditional media are hampered to the point where they can no longer pay for the media rights, then you give the streamers a lot of market power,” says Shirin Malkani, co-chair of the sports industry group at Perkins Coie.
Rights blocked
Bank of America recently compiled a table of recent media rights deals and their estimated values. Some of the numbers differ barely from the reported figures.
The National Hockey League’s contract with its media partners is until the 2027/28 season.
The Major League Baseball contract is until 2028 — and can likely be shaped more by the expiration of the players' collective bargaining agreement in 2026 than the state of the media industry. Still, the rapidly changing regional sports business along with the normal television landscape could make MLB a litmus test for the rights deals that follow.
The PGA Tour Media contract runs until 2030. NBCUniversal owns the Winter Olympics until 2030 and the Summer Olympics until 2032. NASCAR signed a contract At the tip of last yr with media carriers until 2031. ESPN secured the College Football Playoffs until 2031Apple has signed a contract for Major League Soccer until 2032.
The long-term nature of those contracts provides a certain level of security to the present media ecosystem, benefiting leagues, media corporations and pay-TV providers, all of whom depend on a gentle money flow.
“My advice to clients is that if they have a deal right now that seems fair to them or is analytically fair to good, they shouldn't go looking for something great,” said Octagon's Cohen, who represents several skilled sports leagues of their media deals. “Things are going to evolve over the next six years, so it's best to hold on to a good deal.”
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