The NFL will nearly double its media revenue to more than $ 10 billion per season with new rights deals announced Thursday, including an agreement with Amazon Prime Video that grants the broadcast service exclusive rights to “Thursday Night Football “from 2022.
The league earned $ 5.9 billion annually in its current contracts. It will earn $ 113 billion in the 11 seasons of new operations that will begin in 2023, an 80% increase over that previous period, a person with direct knowledge of contracts told The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the money figures were not made public.
Amazon has partnered with the league to play Thursday night games from 2017, but will take over the entire Fox package, which has it since 2018 after CBS and NBC shared the package for two seasons. Amazon aired a Week 16 Saturday game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Arizona Cardinals last year, which was watched by a total of 11.2 viewers and had an average audience of 4.8 million. 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, in addition to returning to the Super Bowl rotation (two games) for the first time since the 2005 season. the ESPN agreement would 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 offerings will begin with the 2023 season and expire after the 2033 schedule. Games on Amazon will also be held on broadcast stations in the cities of the participating teams, which also happens with the games aired on the ESPN and NFL network.
In addition to the two Super Bowls, ESPN and ABC will also get the rights to flex the games on “Monday Night Football,” a right that was only previously given to NBC when push-in 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 hires, all 32 NFL teams and their players can expect an increase in salary caps over the decade. The limit dropped nearly $ 16 million this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Broadcast partners are also planning to get an extra game per season, which will likely start this year. NFL owners are gearing up to implement a regular 17-game season.
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