For as much as has been made of the drop in ratings regarding NFL football broadcasts, it sure wouldn’t seem to have had much impact on the NFL’s ability to get top-dollar from TV networks when negotiating rights to air their games. Until now, Thursday Night Football has aired mainly on some combination of NBC, CBS, or NFL Network. Starting next season, Fox will be the exclusive carrier of TNF.
NFL reached an agreement with FOX Sports to broadcast the next five seasons of Thursday Night Football beginning with the 2018 season – at $660 million per year.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) January 31, 2018
The deal comes at a hefty price. $3 billion in total. Over the five seasons, that averages out to about $660 million per year essentially for one game per week.
JUST IN: Fox gets Thursday Night Football package for next five years. Sources peg deal at more than $660 million average per year.
Per game average on TNF:
2014-15 (CBS): $37.5 million
2016-17 (CBS/NBC): $45 million
2018-22 (FOX): $60 million+— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) January 31, 2018
One interesting subplot to keep an eye on as NFL television rights deals start expiring is that ESPN (or, more specifically, ESPN’s parent company, Disney) owns the rights to Monday Night Football for a few more years. Disney recently agreed to a deal to buy the Fox Sports Network of local channels. But since Disney already owns ABC, it the Fox proper channel was not allowed to be part of the deal due to FCC laws. So while Disney now owns the local channels (Fox Sports Wisconsin, Fox Sports Southwest, etc.) and all of the rights to movies produced by 20th Century Fox, the Fox network channel (along with FS1, FS2, and Fox News) are now on their own as an entity.
That means that Disney/ESPN may have had a hand in Fox landing Thursday Night Football; even though they don’t own Fox, they just obtained a huge chunk of what Fox owns. Or, more likely, this deal represents a sort of last-ditch effort for what’s left of Fox to compete with the other big players of network and sports television.
$1,750,000,000: What Fox will pay to the NFL each year, on average, for the rights to Thursday Night Football and the NFC Sunday package through the 2022 season.
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) January 31, 2018
Fox will still maintain their regular allotment of Sunday NFL games. And it’s expected that Fox will announce the Thursday Night Football broadcast team in the coming days. Other networks have used broadcasters from their Sunday games, so the national football audience may be in line for getting more Joe Buck and Troy Aikman in their lives. It’s also expected that the network change won’t affect the NFL’s “color rush” uniform package for Thursday night games.
