Last week, ESPN, Fox, and Warner Brothers Discovery announced plans for a joint streaming service that sounds a lot like a new-age cable package. The news was not met with enthusiasm by the NFL.
John Ourand of Puck.news reports that the NFL is “scouring” its contracts with ESPN and Fox to see whether the two broadcast partners have the right under the NFL deals to include NFL games on the proposed product. The NFL, per Ourand, was “blindsided” by the move and is looking for “potential loopholes” that might keep NFL games off the new platform.
Even if the NFL cannot find legal standing to block the move, the situation potentially impairs the relationship between the NFL and two of its primary broadcast partners. And the NFL has ways of making its displeasure known with wayward TV networks, including but not limited to giving them less-than-ideal schedules of games.
Why does the league care about an ESPN and Fox partnership? The combination could give the two companies more leverage in future negotiations, preventing the NFL from continuing its streak of getting networks to pay too much for NFL content. One of the tricks of the trade for the league is to always have one or two more potential bidders than packages.
Falcons owner Arthur Blank recently alluded to that dynamic in comments to Daniel Kaplan of FrontOfficeSports.com regarding the mega-steamer.
“There’s plenty of competition for the NFL’s media rights,” Blank told Kaplan. “If you reduce it to such a small number then you don’t have quite the opportunity — but I don’t think the league is worried about that at this point.”
Blank wisely stopped himself before saying after the word “opportunity” something like “to get them to keep doing really bad business deals in order to keep carrying NFL games.”
Regardless, the league isn’t happy with this development. It will be interesting to see whether the lawyers find a leg to stand on and, if not, whether their 2024 schedules will be regarded as not great by ESPN and/or Fox.