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The NFL will likely lean into streaming for their next broadcast rights deal

BUFFALO, NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 05: Bar patrons watch the YouTube TV telecast of the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Los Angeles Chargers on September 05, 2025 in Buffalo, New York. (Photo by Aaron M. Sprecher/Getty Images) | Getty Images

It’s no surprise that the NFL is already strategizing about its next broadcast deal, as they’re trying to get the ball rolling with the players’ union, in public, on key issues that could be obstacles to labor peace, like an 18-game season and an expanded international slate. Now, reports claim that the NFL is expecting to lean into streaming platforms on its next broadcast rights deal.

The league has an opt-out in its television deal that it can trigger as early as 2029, and the current collective bargaining agreement goes through 2030, but the NFL seems really antsy to get back to the negotiating table already. One reason? The league is pissed that NBC is paying $500 million more for their NBA deal than their deal with the shield, per John Ourand, who is one of the most reputable sources covering the financials of sports.

Here’s what Ourand said on his podcast:

Executives at the NFL are irritated. That deal irritated them. The idea that NBC is paying more for Sunday Night Basketball than for Sunday Night Football. These are people and personalities and it makes the executives at the NFL crazy that that happens.

Technically, the NFL’s broadcast contracts go through the 2033 season, but the league already wants to renegotiate pricing on the deal already signed, based on commissioner Rodger Goodell’s comments to CNBC in September.

“I think our partners would want to sit down and talk to us at any time, and we continue to dialogue with them. I like that opportunity,” Goodell said. “Obviously it’s not going to happen this year. But it could happen as early as next year. That could happen.”

…

“The reason why we felt so strongly about the option is the landscape is changing. It could be a long-term deal with the benefit of having that stability and security of it. But I think the reality of it is it changes so quickly that you want to have the ability to move. I think those options are going to give us a lot of flexibility to potentially go earlier,” said Goodell.

One of the hurdles that the NFL needed to clear before going back into negotiations has recently been solved, as federal regulators pushed through the deal for ESPN to receive NFL Network and other league-owned assets in exchange for the NFL owning a 10 percent equity stake in ESPN. This went through on January 31st of this year.

With that out of the way, nothing is stopping the NFL from approaching its broadcast partners for a renegotiation, as long as networks are willing to sit down for the conversation. From a timing perspective, the MLB has its national media rights deals coming up in 2028, and there’s been some speculation that the power conferences in the NCAA are expecting the NFL to get its new deal done before they’re on the clock in the early 2030s, too. From an NFL perspective, I’m sure that the league wants to skip both in line, considering the huge deal the NBA just received.

Ourand reported on Thursday that there is a belief within Wall Street that the NFL’s media deals can jump from $10.1 billion per year to $20 billion per year. Here’s what Ourand added to the projection of the league doubling its broadcast rights fee:

That model would likely include five games each [to Amazon, Netflix and YouTube], including the four international games the league took back from NFL Network and the two Christmas Day games that Netflix currently has for one more year.

So, how do you help double league broadcast revenue? Put 15 games, including 9 games that usually would have gone to traditional broadcast partners, on streaming platforms!

Streaming platforms, specifically, help the league get around the Sports Broadcasting Act (SBA) of 1961, which states that the NFL doesn’t have antitrust immunity if lower-level games are being played within 75 miles of a broadcasting station on Fridays (high school games) or Saturdays (college games) from the second Friday in September until the second Saturday in December. But what is a broadcasting station in 2026? If this were tested in court, would a streaming platform like YouTube be treated the same as an over-the-air network station?

The Dallas Cowboys already tested the SBA in court once and got a ruling that claimed that the SBA only applied to free over-the-air stations, not subscription television like satellite or cable. There’s been roughly a billion thinkpieces written over the years from lawyers who have claimed that the NFL should be able to win the right to broadcast at any time on any day of the week at any point in the year, if they played their games on a streaming platform (or subscription television) instead of over the air.

So why go the streaming route instead of just putting the game on cable? Well, money. Alphabet, the parent company of YouTube, Amazon and Netflix have a combined market cap of $6.2 trillion as it stands right now. Disney, the parent company of ESPN and the league’s only cable partner, is big until you compare it to other big companies. Their $188 billion market cap is only worth 3 percent of the NFL’s streaming trio. In short, the tech companies that also stream content have a lot more money to tap into than broadcast media companies.

It seems unlikely that the nine new games would be broadcast during the normal Sunday slate of action. Maybe this is how we finally get more regular weekday or Saturday NFL action. Island games are what make the league the most bang for its buck, and if they’re trying to double broadcast fees, it will almost certainly come by way of expanded primetime games.

Source: https://www.acmepackingcompany.com/...treaming-for-their-next-broadcast-rights-deal