Blogs Fox Lands TV Rights Deal for NFL's Thursday Night Football Games

  • January 31, 2018
  • 712 views

  • 0 comments

  • 0 favorites

Fox has agreed to a five-year deal with the NFL to broadcast Thursday Night Football.

The NFL announced the move Wednesday, per ESPN's Darren Rovell, who reported the deal is worth an "average of more than $660 million a year." Per the agreement, Fox will broadcast 11 games each season from Week 4 to Week 15.

Rovell also noted Fox will pay the NFL an average of $1.75 billion each year for the Thursday night and NFC packages through the 2022 season.

Sports Business Journal's John Ourand originally reported Fox would pay approximately $550 million annually through 2022 to carry 11 games per season along with NFL Network and an undisclosed digital partner.

Amazon paid the NFL $50 million to stream Thursday Night Football in 2017 after Twitter earned the digital rights in 2016 for $40 million.

Bloomberg's Scott Soshnick and Lucas Shaw reported Fox had competition from NBC and CBS—who paid a combined $450 million a year to air TNF games each of the past two seasons—but noted "their enthusiasm has waned with NFL ratings down 9.7 percent this past regular season."

ESPN, which owns the rights to Monday Night Football through 2021, did not submit a bid, per Ourand.

Fox has yet to announce which broadcasters will call the TNF games, but Ourand reported Wednesday that Joe Buck and Troy Aikman—the network's No. 1 broadcast team—"will not be in the booth."

That move indicates a shift in NFL policy after the league required CBS (Jim Nantz, Tony Romo) and NBC (Mike Tirico, Cris Collinsworth) to use its top talent for the TNF broadcasts in 2017.

Tags:

0 Comments

There are no comments yet. Add a comment.

Video CMS powered by ViMP (Ultimate) © 2010-2024