When the NFL flexed its muscles by signaling its intent to renegotiate its media rights deals, I thought it was unfair to legacy networks like CBS Sports.
After all, CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN, and Amazon Prime Video thought their rights were secure through at least 2030 when they agreed to fork over an eye-watering $111 billion over 11 years to carry live games during the most recent round of negotiations in 2021. Yet here is the NFL signalling it wants to re-negotiate now—four years before its potential opt-out and seven years before the official expiration of the deals.
My thinking, however, has since changed. Now I think the legacy partners should run—not walk—to the negotiating table.
Yes, the NFL will hold them up like Jesse James. The Shield is asking for a 50% to 60% increase from Paramount Skydance on the $2.1 billion a year currently paid by CBS, according to CNBC. The network would have to start paying the higher fee as soon as next season. But here’s why getting these deals done early makes business sense for media partners.
For Paramount Skydance, the NFL is the glue. Due to Skydance’s $8 billion purchase of Paramount in 2025, the NFL could hypothetically cite a change of ownership as a contractual reason for yanking CBS’s game package. So it behooves Paramount Skydance to get its NFL house in order quickly.
It’s also no accident that the NFL picked CBS as the first partner to renegotiate with. In addition to the aforementioned contract clause, the league knows it has new ownership over a barrel. It’s leveraging the situation to set the market for future negotiations with Fox, NBC, ESPN, and Prime. The NFL’s pitch is as simple as it is powerful, say sources: Double our annual rights payout to roughly $3 billion now, and we’ll eliminate the opt-out clause in 2029. That means your NFL rights will be safe through 2033.
“Networks want certainty when it pertains to the NFL. Right now, they have none beyond 2029,” Bob Thompson, the former Fox Sports executive turned principal of Thompson Sports Group, tells Front Office Sports. “CBS also has the ‘change of control’ provision lurking. Removing the ‘out’ for the NFL gives CBS the certainty they desire.”
There’s also the rising threat from streamers. Getting deals done now would help NBC and ESPN ward off the tech giants looking to pick off the primetime Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football packages.
So far, Netflix and YouTube have limited themselves to special events, such as Netflix’s three-year deal for Christmas Day doubleheaders or YouTube’s 2025 season opener from Brazil. But the day could soon come when Netflix and YouTube are no longer satisfied with NFL appetizers and instead want the main course. By re-negotiating now, the legacies can potentially limit them to one-off deals rather than full packages.
As for Prime Video, it already boasts Thursday Night Football. The league loves Prime’s ability to attract younger viewers. It’s a safe bet that Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, with a market capitalization of $2.3 trillion, wants all the NFL it can get. Prime’s ultimate goal is to land its first Super Bowl, U.S. chief Jay Marine told us at “Tuned In” last fall.
Meanwhile, the annual upfront selling season, where networks sell the bulk of their advertising inventory, is only weeks away. For NFL media partners, the ability to beat their chests to Madison Avenue about locking up the hottest property in all entertainment is invaluable.
As former CBS communications guru LeslieAnne Wade tells FOS: “In an unstable mainstream media world, NFL rights are close to the only guarantee for stability and relevance for the networks. With that, securing a position as an NFL rights holder for years into the future increases in value and as a priority.”
The keyword there is “priority.” Keeping NFL media rights has become an almost existential priority for Paramount’s Skydance, warns media analyst Richard Greenfield of Lightshed Partners. Especially given its massive $110 billion deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.
“If CBS lost the NFL, it is hard to imagine Paramount surviving, and we do not believe that is an exaggeration,” writes Greenfield.
CBS is coming off the high of broadcasting the most-watched regular-season game in NFL history as its Thanksgiving Day telecast of Chiefs-Cowboys averaged a record 57.2 million viewers. But while some may scoff at the idea of the NFL dumping CBS, it’s happened before.
After being outbid by Rupert Murdoch’s upstart Fox, CBS lost its NFL rights of 40 years in 1994. The single decision changed the fates of two networks, recalls Wade, who was the head of communications for CBS Sports at the time.
Her proud network was forced to wander through the wilderness for four long years before finally regaining NFL rights in 1998. Meanwhile, she says the NFL gambit “leveled up” Fox and put it on the map as a legit network. No wonder former CBS Sports boss Sean McManus’s hand was shaking when he signed the deal to regain the NFL, starting with the ‘98 season.
“It was devastating emotionally because of the friends/family who would leave CBS and follow football to its new home,” Wade recalls. “More importantly, it hurt CBS across all programming units because the network lost a vital promotional platform for other shows and specials; particularly promotion to men and a younger audience. Even 60 Minutes missed football as a lead-in.”
As for the present, Puck’s John Ourand reports all indications are that the NFL wants to have its new deals in place by the start of the 2026 season. Fair or not, it’s a challenge the league’s legacy media partners should welcome.
