Television Rights Contracts Bring in Lucrative Revenues for Major Sports Leagues

Television rights to NFL games are big business. After 35 years of airing Monday Night Football, ABC lost the weekly slot, beginning with the 2006 season, to cable sports company ESPN, although the program ultimately remains under its original corporate umbrella since both ABC and ESPN are owned by the Walt Disney Company. Disney is paying dearly for the privilege.

New deals to air NFL games were previously announced for 2023-33. Disney’s deal for Monday Night Football on Disney-owned ESPN amounts to $2.55 billion per year. ESPN’s deal includes the rights to air 500 additional hours of programming and expands ESPN’s digital rights to stream Monday Night Football on ESPN+. Fox’s deal is an annual average of about $2.03 billion per year for the Sunday afternoon NFC league package through 2033, while CBS agreed to pay an annual average of about $1.85 billion for the Sunday afternoon AFC package (NFC teams tend to be in larger markets with larger numbers of fans, hence the difference in fees). Fox previously aired Thursday night games for $660 million per year, but the new rights awarded Thursday nights to Amazon Prime for $1.32 billion per year (the first time a streaming service will exclusively air a full NFL package). NBC is spending $1.71 billion per year for Sunday night games. The overall cost to air NFL games during the 2023 to 2033 period amounts to approximately $105 billion. In the previous package (which expires in 2021), CBS, Fox, NBC and Disney paid $43.1 billion. In addition, YouTube TV is paying approximately $2 billion per year to air a Sunday Ticket subscription package starting with the 2023-24 season. Meanwhile, the NFL Network (a cable and satellite network owned by the NFL) airs approximately 13 games and 27 studio shows and it is staffed with dozens of on-air announcers and analysts.

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