The NFL will nearly double its media revenue to more than $ 10 billion a 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 earned $ 5.9 billion a year in its current contracts. It will receive $ 113 billion in the 11 seasons of new transactions starting in 2023, an increase of 80% over the previous period, a person with direct knowledge of contracts told the Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity, as the money figures were not made public.
Amazon has partnered with the league to air Thursday night games from 2017, but will take over the entire package from Fox, which has owned it since 2018, after CBS and NBC split the package for two seasons. Amazon aired a Saturday, May 16 game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Arizona Cardinals last year, which was watched by about 11.2 spectators in total and had an average audience of 4.8 million minutes. This was a record for the largest audience that aired an NFL game.
The games will continue to air on CBS, Fox, NBC and ESPN, while ABC will have a limited game schedule and return to Super Bowl rotation (two games) for the first time since the 2005 season. The ESPN deal was scheduled to take place. ends after 2021, while the others expired a year later, but ESPN will have a bridge deal for 2022.
With the exception of Amazon, the new offers will start with the 2023 season and expire after the 2033 schedule. The games on Amazon will also be broadcast on over-the-air broadcast stations in the cities of the participating teams, which is also , the case of games broadcast on ESPN and NFL.
In addition to the two Super Bowls, ESPN and ABC will also win the rights to flex games to “Monday Night Football,” a right previously granted to NBC when flex programming was introduced in 2006.
The contract also extends digital rights to other networks. ESPN + will broadcast one of the games in London, and NBC’s “Peacock” platform will also have exclusive games.
With strong new contracts, the 32 NFL teams and their players can look forward to rising salaries throughout the decade. The ceiling fell by almost $ 16 million this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The broadcast partners also aim to get an extra game per season, probably starting this year. NFL owners are preparing to implement a regular 17-game season.
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