The National Football League is about to sign new rights agreements with media partners Amazon.com Inc. many games run exclusively and TV networks are paying up to double their current rate, said people familiar with the matter.
New deals could be struck next week, the people said. The Sunday and Monday TV deals for the league’s franchises with Fox, CBS, NBC and ESPN will likely last as long as 11 years, they said.
ESPN’s deal would take effect after the 2021-22 season, while agreements with Fox, CBS and NBC would take effect after the 2022-23 season.
A deal with Amazon would result in a significant number of Thursday night matches exclusively on the Prime Video platform and represent the league’s biggest streaming quest, some of the people said. Those games wouldn’t be available on traditional television outside of the two playing teams’ local markets, they said.
Amazon has become an aggressive bidder for sports rights at home and abroad. The company is already in a relationship with the NFL as it has streaming rights to Thursday night football since 2017. Those games have also been broadcast by the league-owned NFL Network and most recently by the Fox Network, whose parent company is Fox Corp. owned by News Corp, the parent company of Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co.