[TV orNotTV] CNBC report on Sunday Ticket bidding

[Adam Bowie]

An interesting piece from CNBC suggesting that the NFL is being slow in finalising bids for the Sunday Ticket rights:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/24/disney-apple-and-amazon-keep-waiting-as-nfl-considers-sunday-ticket-offers.html

Disney, Apple and Amazon are all in the mix, but the NFL wants the winning bidder to become a partner in NFL Media. 

Oh, and anyone thinking that maybe one of these digital players would swallow the cost and offer the package cheaply, it seems that the NFL's deals with broadcasters means that the package would still have to retail for around $300.

Adam (who remains fascinated by sports TV rights deals no matter where in the world)

[PGage]

It sounds like none of the three new options would require Sunday Ticket subscribers to pay to become a regular streamer, which I guess means they learned from DirectTV there is more money to be made selling the $300/year football deal than in using it to attract more regular customers. But how many Ticket subscriptions do they have to sell to make the $2 Billion profitable?

Also, looks like the NFL wants the rights owner for Sunday Ticket to also be a part owner of NFL Media, which runs NFL RedZone, which I always thought was basically an alternative and competitor to Sunday Ticket.

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[John Edwards]

On Mon, Jun 27, 2022 at 9:44 AM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:

Also, looks like the NFL wants the rights owner for Sunday Ticket to also be a part owner of NFL Media, which runs NFL RedZone, which I always thought was basically an alternative and competitor to Sunday Ticket.

I’m not sure it’s really a competitor, especially since there’s a version of RedZone that airs on Sunday Ticket. (The Andrew Siciliano one.)

Sunday Ticket serves people who want to be sure to see their preferred team, no matter where they live, or people who want to choose the game they watch in any window without having to deal with the NFL blackout rules (especially in areas with two teams).

RedZone is more for gamblers, fantasy football players and people who want to watch highlights rather than one game. 

John 

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John Edwards
"You can insure against the weather, but you can't insure against incompetence, can you?" - Phil Tufnell

[PGage]

I used to have Sunday Ticket, and as you say it includes it’s own RedZone channel, which does much the same thing as the NFL Network Red Zone (though IMO not as well). 

If Sunday Ticket (with its RedZone) is available on Apple in 2 years, and the NFL Network version is somehow either more expensive or less good, I might be more inclined to pay the $300 for the Ticket, and Apple might be motivated to arrange just that if it made more money from Sunday Ticket, but also had influence over what the NFL Network RZ did and cost.

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[Adam Bowie]

The Athletic has a piece on Sunday Ticket rights agreements with Apple dragging on:

https://theathletic.com/3907524/2022/11/18/nfl-sunday-ticket-apple-directv/?redirected=1 (for those who have access)

In essence, it sounds like Apple is after additional rights beyond those which Direct TV had previously had. Obviously it'll be a streaming-first offering, but the report made it sound like they wanted in-market rights (as they have with their MLS deal).

It also sounds like the NFL wants an amount that it's unlikely to get, unless Apple can seriously up the number of Sunday Ticket subscribers. The report suggests that DirectTV has 1m subscribers paying the $400, and that makes it a loss leader. To get to the $3.5bn the NFL would like, Apple would need 8.75m subscribers paying the same rate! Plus, the report says, RedZone has actually diluted the value of Sunday Ticket. 

Final para:

“They really need to have this announced by the Super Bowl,” said the individual close to the NFL, pinning the timing to the middle of February 2023. “But if it doesn’t happen, you’re really starting to run the clock.”

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[JW]

> In essence, it sounds like Apple is after additional rights beyond those
> which Direct TV had previously had. Obviously it'll be a streaming-first
> offering, but the report made it sound like they wanted in-market rights

> (as they have with their MLS deal).

Right now, the broadcast networks get streaming rights to their games, so that Paramount+ has the games that local CBS affiliates are showing (to be clear, only for the game that the affiliate in each market is showing), and there's presumably a similar deal for Fox; I'm not finding a definitive streamer. In the modern era, it's easy to forget just how valuable the broadcast networks are to the NFL, but they're the folks who produce and show Jaguars-Texans games that are of minimal interest to anyone outside Jacksonville and Houston.

So I'd imagine that the current licensees guard their in-market rights pretty jealously, and the league is in no hurry to alienate them, even if it ultimately means that the Sunday Ticket rights are less valuable.