NFL says ‘nothing’s changed’ regarding early media rights renewals

Recent weeks on the NFL media rights beat have marked a changing of the tides.

Last September, the NFL publicly acknowledged for the first time that it would seek to strike early renewals with its broadcast partners several years prior to the 2029-30 season, when it has the contractual option to exit most of its agreements. The goal for the league was simple: negotiate higher rights fees now and, in return, remove the exit option at the end of the decade, allowing its partners to guarantee themselves NFL inventory well into the 2030s.

At first, it looked as if new deals were inevitable. After all, NFL programming is borderline existential to legacy broadcast networks like CBS, Fox, and NBC, all of which still rely on lucrative retransmission fees from distributors and local affiliates to fund their businesses. But then, things began to change. The NFL started facing pressure from all corners of Washington. Congress, the FCC, the DOJ, and others all started scrutinizing the shift of live sports off of linear television and onto streaming services. Those roadblocks seemingly bought league partners enough time to where no new deals were finalized prior to the 2026-27 season, as the NFL reportedly wanted.

Now, any early deals would only grant the NFL three additional seasons at higher rights fees (assuming it would otherwise exercise its opt-out clause at the end of the decade). And it seems like the league’s broadcast partners are starting to sense they have a bit of leverage to hold out without risk of losing the NFL following the 2029-30 season.

During a recent earnings call, Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch outright said his network won’t negotiate early, instead saying Fox will negotiate with the NFL on a normal cadence around the 2029-30 timeline. Further reporting suggested that negotiations between CBS and the NFL were “on hold” amid Paramount’s ongoing effort to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. And while CBS Sports president David Berson did not outright rule out early negotiations when speaking with Awful Announcing last week, the undertones of his answers suggested nothing was imminent between the two sides.

But despite all of the headwinds, the league itself doesn’t appear to be frazzled. Asked by Awful Announcing during a conference call on Thursday whether its outlook on early media rights renewals had changed, the league said no.

“As we’ve said before, we’re always talking to our partners, right? We’re always talking about what we can do better, both in what’s right in front of us and what’s longer term. So, I don’t think anything’s changed on our end,” the NFL’s head media executive Hans Schroeder said. “We’re always going to look at opportunities to sort of make sure we have the right model, partnerships, in place for the future. We’re lucky and incredibly fortunate to have great partners today. And we have partnerships that are in place for a number of years with our existing partners, so we and they remain committed about delivering the best experience for our fans. And we’ll continue and stay focused on that, and continue to engage with our partners about opportunities that we have ahead of us, where we can better and even better serve our fans. So nothing’s changed.”

As Schroeder makes clear, it is not admitting defeat on this front. At least not yet. But without any firm details about the status of talks or any potential timelines, it’s fair to wonder how seriously the league is pursuing this path now. If the NFL holds out until 2029-30, it has the potential to rework the entire structure of its broadcast layout. If it strikes new deals early, the league loses a lot of its flexibility and will more or less be stuck with the same core packages that exist today into the mid-2030s.

Is it worth it for the league to sacrifice that flexibility for three years of additional revenue? The ability to almost fully reconfigure its existing packages at the end of the decade is arguably more valuable.

For now, however, the NFL seems to be keeping its options open. It just appears less likely that it’ll have willing participants on the other side of the table prior to 2029-30.

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