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NBC, NFL Extend Sunday Night Football Agreement For 11 More Years

The NFL is keeping Sunday Night Football on NBC.

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Sunday night football viewers won’t have to change their viewing habits for the next 11 years. The NFL is staying put on NBC. The two parties have announced a brand new 11-year extension which calls for NBC Sports to continue as the exclusive home for primetime television’s #1 show for the past 10 years, Sunday Night Football.

The deal will officially go into place in 2023. Under the terms of the new agreement, NBC and Peacock, NBCUniversal’s streaming service, will broadcast the Sunday night game thru 2033. Starting with the 2021 season, Peacock will begin streaming all NBC Sunday Night Football games and the Football Night in America studio show. Peacock will also create a new exclusive and expanded postgame show following each week’s game.

“We are excited to expand upon our relationship with the NFL, which is the most powerful content in sports and entertainment,” said Pete Bevacqua, Chairman, NBC Sports Group. “Sunday Night Football has been television’s most-watched primetime show for a decade, and we look forward to continuing our best-in-class presentation of SNF, Super Bowls, and playoff games for many years to come, while also broadening our audience with Peacock becoming the live streaming home for all NBC NFL games.”

“Comcast and the NBC family have been outstanding partners for us and we are excited to continue that relationship long into the future,” said NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. “Sunday Night Football is firmly established as the No. 1 show in primetime television, and we are looking forward to working with NBC and Peacock to continue to bring the NFL to more fans in more ways than ever before.”

According to NBC’s press release, the network will broadcast a Divisional Playoff game in each of the next 13 seasons. They will also televise two Wild Card playoff games during the 2021, 2022, 2023, 2026, and 2031 seasons, with a single Wild Card telecast in all other seasons. In each of the next seven seasons, NBC will carry a Sunday primetime Wild Card game. All NBC NFL postseason games will stream live on Peacock.

Peacock will also serve as the exclusive national home of six NFL regular-season games – one each year from 2023-28 (giving NBC Sports an additional regular-season game in those seasons) – and will launch a virtual NFL channel, highlighting classic games, as well as NFL Films’ series, library, and archival content, which will all also be available on demand. NBC Sports will have the option to incorporate enhanced and interactive features in game presentations to be streamed live on NBC digital platforms, including Peacock.

Another positive for NBC/Peacock, they’ll have the opportunity to produce four of the next 13 Super Bowls, including an additional three Super Bowls as part of the new deal. The events which will fall under NBC’s control are the 2022 Super Bowl in Los Angeles, and Super Bowl games that will be played in 2026, 2030, and 2034. The cities for those games have not yet been determined.

One tidbit that did cause a few media pundits to raise their eyebrows, the NFL will have the opportunity to terminate the agreement with NBC on a one-time basis after seven years of the new deal have been completed. Whether they do or not will depend largely on the appetite for media rights at that time.

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John Anderson Announces Retirement from SportsCenter on ESPN

“I don’t really know what’s quite next, I have some things in the fire. But SportsCenter will not be it.”

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Photo of John Anderson
Credit: Mediaite

Longtime SportsCenter anchor John Anderson has announced that when his contract comes up at the end of June, he will no longer be doing SportsCenter for ESPN. Anderson, who joined ESPN in 1999 does plan to continue covering certain events, but after 25 years he believes it is time to stop doing ESPN’s flagship show. Anderson spoke on his podcast, The Inside Wisconsin Show and prior to the episode’s release tomorrow, a clip was released:

“My contract runs out at ESPN at the end of June,” Anderson said. “I have decided that that will be the end. I’m going to leave the company. I’m going to sort of retire from ‘SportsCenter.’ I’m going to get to do a few track-and-field things, I’m going to get to continue to do the Boston Marathon and the New York Marathon – which I love – and some NCAA track meets and some SEC stuff.

“I am incredibly excited about that. It’s been a good run…I feel like it’s been a good run. The operation has changed. I don’t know that it’s passed me by, but it’s taken its toll and I still want to be able to do the best shows that I can, and I don’t know that if in years 26 or 27 I have the stamina to do it again.  

“So, I’m done…I don’t really know what’s quite next. I have some things in the fire. But SportsCenter will not be it.”

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Chris ‘Mad Dog’ Russo: NFL Streaming Games ‘Gets Obscene’

“They’ve got a Wild Card game on Amazon Prime Video, which means you can’t switch with the remotes.”

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Christopher "Mad Dog" Russo
Courtesy: Cindy Ord, Getty Images for SiriusXM

The National Football League has announced that the Philadelphia Eagles opening matchup taking place from San Paolo, Brazil against an opponent to be determined for the 2024 season will stream exclusively on Peacock. Even though the game will be exclusive to Peacock – thus requiring fans to subscribe in order to watch – it will also be broadcast on an over-the-air network in the local markets of the teams involved in the game. Christopher ‘Mad Dog’ Russo is not a fan of this decision by the league.

During his “What Are You Mad About?” segment on Wednesday morning’s edition of First Take on ESPN, Russo expressed his indignation towards the game being exclusively streamed by Peacock. Within his discourse, he presented a hypothetical scenario of an Eagles fan who continues to spend money to see the team at Lincoln Financial Field and how they would not fly down to Brazil to see the game. Russo continued by saying that the fan would then miss the game without having Peacock so the NFL is able to drive more revenue.

“It’s hard to get Peacock; I don’t want to get Peacock, alright?,” Russo said. “I want to watch the game normal. Give me [Joe] Buck and [Troy] Aikman, give me the CBS crew, [Tom] Brady’s going to do it. Give me something! Don’t put the Eagles 9,000 miles away and then put them on a cable thing on Peacock which you’ve got to subscribe to so NBC can make more money.”

NBC Sports will broadcast an opening night game during Week 1 on Thursday, Sept. 5, along with a Sunday Night Football contest on Sunday, Sept. 8. Within its stretch of primetime football matchups, which also includes a Saturday night Big Ten Conference game, the Friday night NFL game seems to be the only one exclusive to Peacock. The streaming platform is coming off a strong performance for its exclusive Wild Card round playoff matchup, drawing an average of 23 million viewers and becoming the most-streamed NFL game in history.

This past season of Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime Video garnered a 24% increase in viewers compared to its first season, according to data from Nielsen Media Research. These metrics demonstrate that the broadcast property averaged 11.86 million viewers per game during the 2023 NFL season. The OTT streaming platform also presented the inaugural NFL game on Black Friday, which averaged 9.61 million viewers.

Prime Video will reportedly have the exclusive rights to an NFL playoff game next season, and it has continued building out its sports content vertical. The company has reportedly been exploring a potential media rights deal with the National Basketball Association as its national television contract is nearing expiration. The Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros. Discovery are currently in the midst of exclusive negotiating windows with the NBA that conclude on Monday, April 22, after which Amazon will be able to bid.

“They’ve got a Wild Card game on Amazon Prime Video, which means you can’t switch with the remotes,” Russo said, referring to the reported agreement for next season. “I know the NFL prints money – I understand how big they are, but boy this gets obscene.”

“One-hundred percent right,” First Take host Molly Qerim added. “I cannot stand having 8,000 different apps. It needs to be streamlined. It’s annoying – you have to remember all these passwords. I don’t have Peacock; I don’t want Peacock. I completely agree with you.”

ESPN NBA analyst Tim Legler proceeded to convey the dedication of Eagles fans in showing up to the stadium and watching their team. Russo agreed with him that Eagles fans will travel down to Brazil since they pack stadiums and fervently support their team. Off of that point, ESPN NFL reporter Kimberley A. Martin explained that she believes the devotion and zeal from the fanbase is part of the reason why this is a shrewd decision by the NFL.

“This is genius,” Martin said. “You do put the Eagles – that type of team – because they’re going to buy it.”

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NCAA Women’s Championship Round 2 on ESPN Up 121%; Iowa-West Virginia Hits 4.9 Million Viewers

ESPN and ABC posted their four most-watched Women’s March Madness second-round games ever, with Iowa/West Virginia averaging 4.9 million viewers

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Graphic of the NCAA Women's basketball tournament

The women’s college basketball hot streak continues with the second round of the NCAA Women’s Championship on ESPN averaging 1.4 million viewers all weekend. Viewership was at its highest for Caitlin Clark’s final game in Iowa when her Iowa Hawkeyes defeated West Virginia, which amassed a staggering 4.9 million viewers and peaked at 6.4 million.

ESPN and ABC achieved their four-most watched second-round games on record this season. Outside of Iowa/WVU, the matchup between UConn and Stanford averaged 2.1 million viewers, the LSU/Middle Tennessee matchup garnered 2 million viewers, and the Kansas/USC tilt averaged 1.8 million viewers. This matches its first-round coverage, which also set marks for its most-viewed games ever.

According to ESPN’s VP of research Flora Kelly, Iowa/WVU’s 4.9 million viewers would have beaten every Women’s National Championship game from 2005 to 2022:

ESPN is no doubt excited for a potential Elite 8 matchup between Iowa and LSU, a rematch of last year’s national championship game. That game averaged 9.9 million viewers, shattering the previous record for a women’s college basketball game on any network. All it needs is an Iowa win over Colorado and an LSU win over UCLA to make their dream a reality. A potential Iowa/South Carolina national title game could surpass even that.

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