Is the Live Sports Rights Bubble Finally Bursting?

[Guy Chamberlin]

The NFL Network is currently airing one exclusive NFL Network game every week.

 

When their other network contracts run out, they could do this with every game.

 

But they would be walking away from billions, and would need to make sure they could recoup it all under some kind of pay-per-view monopoly.

 

Something tells me it won't be that easy.

[husker98]

The NFL Network is currently airing one exclusive NFL Network game every week.

 

When their other network contracts run out, they could do this with every game.

 

But they would be walking away from billions, and would need to make sure they could recoup it all under some kind of pay-per-view monopoly.

 

Something tells me it won't be that easy.

 

No. They could take up the advertising themselves and go out and sell it. They could then cut out the middle man (big TV) and make a sh#t load of money on top of subscriptions.

 

I know from a sales stand point ( i did it for awhile) it is hard to compete with the internet on its ability to log unique viewership.

 

When TV and Radio do sales they claim they have 10,000 listeners/viewers but that is a rough estimate and is often far from exact. TV has it better in that they can tell you how many house holds their in but it doesn't guarantee these people are watching your show. Thats why when you see news stories on how many people they think watched the super bowl they say estimates, because they don't know for sure.

 

But you can go to any youtube video or stream and see the unique number of visitors and viewers, and thats why Youtube and these other sites have zero issues securing advertising dollars because it gives their sales execs hard numbers to prove to their customers that consumers are watching their ads, even if it is only for the 5 seconds before you hit the skip button.

 

Hard viewership numbers are hard to beat, and big corporations would shell out even more cash to the NCAA or NFL instead of the myriad of different cable and satellite companies.

 

Unfortunately if this came to pass a lot of people would loose their jobs too so its not all rainbows and a pot of gold for everyone either.

[Guy Chamberlin]

Well networks like ABC, NBC and Fox pay a premium price for football because it can have a halo effect for their non-sports programming, and they can bundle ads with big national brands that also purchase non-sports time on the network.

 

If the network is stuck with a sucky game, if NFL rating sink or if advertisers balk at the price, the NFL still gets its money as long as the guaranteed contract is in place.

 

If the NFL takes over its own distribution they'll control all the advertising, but the 100% football model might not command as many eyes or maintain the same ad rates.

 

I keep waiting for concussions, scandals, Roger Godell or a combination of all three to put the NFL in a tailspin, but the NFL has never been a bigger cash cow than it is right now.

 

I just don't think the Power 5 conferences wield enough clout quite yet to go it alone in any kind of pure network or streaming scenario.