Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder
Katherine Taylor | Reuters
Amazon wants to be the exclusive producer of National Football League Thursday games from 2023, but the NFL may decide to keep certain games on the NFL Network and take less money from Amazon, according to people familiar with the case.
Amazon is in talks with the league to pay about $ 1 billion for an entire season of exclusive games, outside of the two playing teams’ local TV markets, said the people, who asked not to be named because the talks are private. . Talks are underway and no decision has been made yet, people said.
In a new agreement, Amazon would be responsible for all costs of production and would still have to pay a local broadcaster to produce the game for home markets, as the NFL wants the games to be broadcast on Thursday evenings on local TV in each of the participating countries. home markets of teams.
The NFL network, usually packaged as part of expensive pay-TV bundles, imposes requirements on pay-TV distributors to only offer a certain number of games. The Wall Street Journal, which previously reported Amazon’s interest, reported on Wednesday that the NFL Network’s deals require it to broadcast five games exclusively. With the NFL set to add an 18th week, the league could potentially give the NFL Network enough Saturday games and other carveouts to hit the cable network’s limits without diving Thursday, one of the people said.
Still, the NFL may decide that supporting the NFL Network’s value is a higher priority than giving Amazon a full list of Thursday games. The league is still considering proposals to simulate Amazon’s Thursday games on the NFL Network or to split Thursday’s games between Amazon and the NFL Network, two of the people said.
Amazon won’t pay anywhere near $ 1 billion for a full package of games that aren’t entirely exclusive, the people said. Amazon is open to an agreement where it gets branded games to air on NFL Network for less money, the people said. It is also open to a package where it gets less exclusive games for less money.
“This is quite a turning point for the TV industry,” LightShed analyst Rich Greenfield said on CNBC today. “The fact that you can now get games on Thursday evenings without local television – no antenna will work if you’re outside of home markets.”
The deal would build on Amazon’s three-year deal with the NFL to air 12 Thursday games in the 2020, 2021 and 2022 seasons on its Prime Video streaming service. That deal allows Amazon to exclusively broadcast one game each season. Last year, it was a Week 16 game between the Arizona Cardinals and the San Francisco 49ers. Fox’s football deal on Thursday expires in 2022 and will not be bought out prematurely, according to people familiar with the case.
The NFL has been cautious about transferring broadcast rights to streaming services. The league is about to sign deals with its current TV partners – Disney, owner of ESPN and ABC; ViacomCBS; Comcast’s NBCUniversal and Fox – for Sunday and Monday night packages.
Still, streaming is becoming the dominant form of viewing for millions of Americans and can have global reach, unlike traditional pay TV. Several pay TV distributors have signed deals with Amazon Prime Video to make the programming available on set-top boxes, further adding to the friction for the tens of millions of Americans who still pay for linear pay TV bundles from operators such as Comcast and AT&T limited.
Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, CNBC’s parent company.