The NFL will almost double its media revenue to more than $ 10 billion a season with new rights deals announced on Thursday, including a deal with Amazon Prime Video that gives the streaming service exclusive rights to “Thursday Night Football” from 2022.
The league raised $ 5.9 billion a year under its current contracts. It will receive $ 113 billion over the 11 new business seasons starting in 2023, an increase of 80% over the previous period, a person with direct knowledge of the contracts told the Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the monetary figures were not released.
Amazon has partnered with the league to broadcast the games on Thursday nights since 2017, but will take over the full Fox package, which it has since 2018 after CBS and NBC shared the package for two seasons. Amazon aired a Saturday game of Week 16 between the San Francisco 49ers and the Arizona Cardinals last year, which was viewed by an estimated 11.2 viewers and had an average minute audience of 4.8 million. That was a record for the largest audience to broadcast an NFL game.
The games will continue to be broadcast on CBS, Fox, NBC and ESPN, while ABC will have a limited game schedule, in addition to returning to Super Bowl rotation (two games) for the first time since the 2005 season. The ESPN business it was scheduled to end after 2021, while the others expired a year later, but ESPN will have a bridge agreement for 2022.
With the exception of Amazon, the new deals will start with the 2023 season and expire after the 2033 schedule. Games on Amazon will also be broadcast on radio and TV stations in the cities of the participating teams, as well as games broadcast by ESPN and the NFL Network.
In addition to the two Super Bowls, ESPN and ABC will also gain flexible gaming rights for “Monday Night Football”, a right previously only granted to NBC when flexible programming was introduced in 2006.
The contract also extends digital rights to other networks. ESPN + will air one of the games in London and NBC’s “Peacock” platform will also have exclusive games.
With the new robust contracts, the NFL’s 32 teams and their players can expect to see wage caps rise over the decade. The cap has decreased by almost $ 16 million this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Broadcast partners also plan to get an extra game per season, probably starting this year. NFL owners are preparing to implement a 17-game regular season.
___
More AP NFL coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL