Peacock is Paying $110 MILLION for One NFL Wild Card Playoff Game
This is insane, via Joe Flint and Jessica Toonkel at the Wall Street Journal:
The National Football League has struck a one-year deal with NBCUniversal’s Peacock to carry a playoff game exclusively on the streaming service this coming season, the two parties said Monday.
Terms of the deal weren’t announced, but people familiar with the matter said it is in the range of $110 million. The Peacock playoff game will be in prime time on Saturday, Jan. 13, which is the first weekend of the NFL playoffs, known as Wild Card Weekend.
For context, Apple is paying $250 million annually for exclusive rights to more than 1,000 MLS games.
But Peacock will pay $110 million for one NFL game (or 4 hours of live content).
That’s why the NFL is king in the US.
— Joe Pompliano (@JoePompliano) May 15, 2023
Amazon pays $1 billion a year for 15 NFL games and Peacock just paid more than 10% of that for one. $110 million. For four hours of content. Football is life.
The last two NFL Wild Card Weekends averaged 20 million viewers. If I had to guess, NBC’s strategy is hoping five million realize that they can watch all the Law and Order reruns they want or cross their fingers people just forget to cancel. The ol’ Planet Fitness model. Make it so cheap and so hard to cancel that you just keep giving them the $10 a month even though you haven’t gone in five years and now live on the other side of the country. You’re doing your part to cover all of the “Free Pizza Mondays.”
Looking at it from a local perspective, this has to be a death sentence for the NBC Sports RSNs. If Peacock is willing to spend $110 million on one football game, then what makes you think they won’t move every Sixers, Flyers, and Phillies game to the platform exclusively? The goal is to increase subs to mitigate everyone cutting the cord. It’s a no brainer and lessens risk as some RSNs are filing for bankruptcy and missing payments to teams. The Phoenix Suns just abandoned their RSN partner and are making games next year available via antenna or digital streaming service.
Break the news to your pops slowly because one, he’s gonna be ornery if the Birds are a wild card team this year and two, he’s gonna be pissed if he already was on the phone with Comcast for two hours trying to cancel that streaming service with the giant rainbow bird. If you want to make it easier I made him a streaming pyramid to make the decision easier as a visual:
