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Starting next year, the entertainment giant will receive more than $1 billion a year from Paramount, NBCUniversal, Fox, Disney, Amazon and YouTube. Oh, and they get about $50 million a year from Apple, which pays a hefty fee to sponsor 20 minutes of content a year (the Super Bowl halftime show).
That supplier is the NFL, and their products are in high, high, high demand.
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Everyone knows that the NFL, led by Commissioner Roger Goodell, is the undisputed king of live television, with an average number of televised games and broadcast partners unmatched (except for the World Cup finals). world or college football games). The league's recent deal with YouTube for Sunday ticket packages only underscores its power.
The NFL will now receive $120 billion over the next decade, not just from traditional broadcasters like NBC, CBS, Disney, and Fox, but also from three of today's most powerful tech companies, Apple, Amazon, and Google.
With traditional pay-TV offerings in sharp decline (Disney CEO Bob Iger said earlier this year that traditional TV was headed for a "cliff" and would soon reverse), this gives the league the opportunity to identify companies that are not responding. to these topics. … and then who can benefit?
“[The Sunday Ticket] is a product that's been around for a long time, but it's entering the next phase of disruption in its distribution system, moving from limited satellite distribution to a broader scale. Available. Dorov Prasad, the NFL's senior vice president of media strategy and strategic investments, at a virtual news conference Thursday.
In a world of news where every company tied to a pay-TV package sweats, these companies want not just an option (and thus the broadcast rights included in the deal), but the league as well. At the end of the current agreement, wire belts will become today's mantle and transmission networks will not be like traditional equipment.
Last year's 11-year deals with Paramount, Disney, NBCUniversal, Fox and Amazon represent a foothold in streaming (Thursday Night Football is the biggest challenge), but Google's deal with YouTube is an important extension of this strategy. . .
"I don't know if it's really a changing of the guard, but rather an expansion of players and an expansion of the ways that our fans interact with our sport and our league," Prasad said. "There is no question that the audience on digital platforms has only grown in recent years, and our interest in the NFL is to get our content out to as many fans as possible, and as fans flock digitally, we want to be there in a way significant".
YouTube, which controls the most popular video streaming platform on the planet and the largest virtual provider of multi-channel video on YouTube TV, also has freedom to create products and prices.
According to Prasad, the league wants YouTube to offer Sunday tickets at an "affordable" price. "YouTube has the freedom to sell its product how it thinks the market wants it."
And the company's experience in streaming video is also a factor. The league wanted to expand its reach through alternative technology and broadcasts, whether it was Manningcast on ESPN2 or Amazon's X-ray technology.
Expect no less from YouTube.
"I think that was a big part of the appeal of YouTube," Prasad said. Traits are everywhere in football."
The future of media consumption is changing with technology and is highly uncertain. For a sports league that relies on rights fees, this is a scary proposition with risks. The NFL is trying to mitigate the risks by making deals with its legacy partners, but also by making sure that if things go wrong in the linear TV business, fans can watch their favorite teams on Sunday afternoons.
You can be sure that other leagues, especially the NBA, are watching the start of rights negotiations very closely.
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