When the National Football League announced its schedule for the 2023 season, it also revealed that one NFL playoff game will be streamed exclusively on Peacock this season. While the announcement didn’t receive a positive response from fans, it’s seemingly more than worth it for the league financially.
After agreeing to a new collective bargaining agreement with the players union, the NFL quickly turned its focus toward negotiating new broadcasting rights contracts with its partners. Between deals with Amazon, FOX, CBS Sports, NBC and Disney, the NFL will receive more than $100 billion in TV revenue alone over the next decade.
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Each year, the league receives more than $1 billion from its broadcasting partners. Google paid $2 billion per season for the rights to Sunday Ticket, Amazon is providing the league with more than $1 billion per year for exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football, Disney pays $2.5 billion per year to broadcast Monday Night Football and playoff games, while NBC ($1.7 billion), FOX ($2 billion) and CBS ($1.85 billion) each pay for weekly games, playoff matchups and a Super Bowl.
While playoff games have typically been aired by the league’s standard TV partners for decades, details of the agreement with NBCUniversal explain why the league chose to sell off its streaming rights for a playoff game to a streaming service.
As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, NBCUniversal is paying around $110 million for the exclusive rights to one wild card playoff game this season. Jim Trotter of The Athletic also noted the $110 million figure and explained part of the rationale for the deal from the league’s perspective is to have leverage in negotiations with Amazon.
It’s all about business for the NFL. As Trotter captures, the $110 million deal for a single playoff game sets the floor for future negotiations if league officials want to sell the streaming rights to another playoff game in the future.
Furthermore, per Trotter, Amazon has a reputation for being extremely difficult to negotiate with. While the league adjusted its Thursday Night Football schedule for the upcoming season to put better games on Amazon’s streaming service, it only came after the 2022 TNF schedule left fans and the company frustrated.
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The expectation around the NFL is that the salary cap will rise by nearly $20 million every year for the next decade and that is tied into the league’s goal to eventually earn $25 billion in revenue in a single year. While streaming a playoff game on Peacock isn’t well-received by fans, it’s a deal league officials and team owners wanted.