With ESPN-only audience sizes for Monday Night Football creeping toward the weekly Amazon streaming figures for Thursdays, the NFL pumped up the numbers by getting Disney to add six more MNF games to ABC.
John Ourand of Puck reports that, when NFL Media C.O.O. Hans Schroeder called the league’s other broadcast partners to break the news of the expansion of the Monday night simulcasts, the reactions “ranged from resigned disappointment to outright fury.” And for good reason.
Monday Night Football was reconfigured as of 2006 as a cable package. Three-letter networks that have NFL packages don’t want to compete with NFL packages on other three-letter networks. Beyond the fact that it makes it easier for ABC to win Monday night against CBS, NBC, and Fox, it dilutes the overall advertising dollars available for network broadcasts of NFL games.
As Ourand notes, some networks believe the NFL is playing favorites with Disney/ABC/ESPN.
The ABC simulcasts became a staple last year, during multiple Hollywood strikes. Other networks feared this exact outcome. With lower audiences for ESPN-only games, the NFL would want more ABC simulcasts. Ourand reports that ESPN executives and NFL executives began discussing the addition of more ABC games earlier this month, once it was clear that ESPN-only games would pale in comparison to last year’s same-week numbers.
"[T]he rules changed, and only one company is benefiting,” an unnamed executive told Ourand. “And there’s only so much sales inventory out there.”
Boosting the NFL’s position is that there’s only so many packages. So whether it’s Jerry Jones threatening to fire radio employees he doesn’t actually employ or the NFL changing broadcast terms on the fly, pro football has the drawing power to dictate terms to its paying customers, even when a small handful of customers are collectively paying billions per year.
The good news/bad news is that the current situation won’t last all that much longer. The NFL can tear up all current broadcast deals after 2029, three years before expiration. Given what the NBA recently got for a far less popular product, it’s a no-brainer that all packages will be up for grabs, in only five years.
