FOX doesn’t seem too concerned about declining TV ratings for the NFL. According to a report by Bloomberg, the network is willing to spend upwards of $2 billion annually to keep its current slate of Sunday NFL games.
A $2 billion deal between FOX and the National Football League would almost double their most recent contract worth $1.1 billion per year. The Sunday package for FOX is separate from their Thursday Night Football broadcast schedule. In 2018, FOX agreed to a five-year deal for 11 TNF games each season and began shelling out $660 million annually for that package.
Few industries benefit from a global pandemic, and COVID-19 surely came at a poor time for the NFL as they were getting set to begin negotiating new TV contracts. ESPN’s deal for Monday Night Football will expire in 2021, while the NFL packages on CBS, FOX and NBC all end in 2022. Despite the league’s continued growth in recent years, it’s reasonable to think a global pandemic and declining ratings this season would drive rights fees down, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
Not only will the NFL demand more for rights fees in the nearing round of negotiations, but Bloomberg reports the packages could be reconfigured. FOX may well ditch the TNF slate of games, which ABC could be interested in, and they’ll likely have competition for their Sunday package as well.
If the FOX Sunday package jumps from $1.08 billion to $2 billion, other networks will probably see similar increases. It parallels a recent story from Wayne Friedman of MediaPost, which estimated NFL rights fees for networks could jump from $5.6 billion to as much as $8.8 billion per year.