The NFL plans to talk to non-traditional media companies to potentially sell them the rights to a live game, NFL media chief Hans Schroeder told CNBC Sport on Friday.
“We have other people who are both partners in a smaller sense — maybe not a complete package — or people who are still somewhere in the media landscape who would like to be partners on live NFL games,” Schroeder said in an interview with Radio Row before Super Bowl LX in San Francisco.
“We’re going to have these conversations,” he added. “We want to understand all of our options and how to think about the best model for us, for our fans, for our teams going forward. So, to answer your question, you know, we’re going to listen to you and probably have a lot of different people who want to have a conversation with us. It’s very fortunate. We say that humbly, and we’re going to make sure we have those conversations to understand.”
Schroeder did not give details on which companies might be interested in purchasing a live game. The NFL sold out a week’s game to YouTube last season for about $100 million — a one-off strategy it could replicate with other digital platforms. The societal shift toward streaming has made digital a comparable rival to television, which has long been the league’s preferred distribution strategy due to its reach.
“Now you see these big digital platforms that can reach audiences at the broadcast level,” Schroeder said. “It just creates more options.”
The NFL and its traditional media partners — Disney, Paramount Worldwide, Comcastfrom NBCUniversal and Amazon — will likely begin discussing new media rights later this year, four years ahead of the current deal’s opt-out clause, according to sources familiar with the matter. Schroeder echoed NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s comments to CNBC in September that the league would be open to such discussions.
“I’m sure they’re doing some work on their own when the time comes, either because they want to kind of push the ‘engage’ button or because the commissioner says, ‘Hey, let’s do this,'” Schroeder said.
The NFL is expanding the number of international games to nine next season – a record. The league could sell a new package of some of those games to a media partner as early as next year, he said.
“That will be one of the things we look at,” Schroeder said.