NFL free-for-all comes with price

By David Mullen

At one time, the National Football League had the strictest blackout policy of televised home games of any of the major professional sports leagues. With the introduction of a new NFL-owned app, watching your favorite team live has become a free-for-all.

But being the NFL, all-access broadcasts will not be free at all.

On July 25, the NFL introduced NFL+, offering direct-to-consumer: “access to live out-of-market preseason games across all devices, live local and primetime regular season and postseason games on mobile devices, live local and national audio for every game, NFL Network shows on demand, NFL Films archives and more.”

In a press release, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodall said: “Today [July 25] marks an important day in the history of the National Football League with the launch of NFL+. The passionate and dedicated football fans are the lifeblood of the NFL, and being able to reach and interact with them across multiple platforms is incredibly important to us.” 

That’s classic Goodall; claiming to be more concerned about what is best for the fans and never acknowledging the increased revenue for a league that grossed roughly $18 billion in 2021 for its 32 teams. 

The announcement comes four days after the league introduced 13 alternate jerseys and helmets for 2022 to create more revenue through the nflshop.com website. Included is an all-white Cincinnati Bengals helmet with black tiger stripes that is the rage on social media. Siegfried and Roy would have been proud. 

But TV media rights are the NFL’s cash cow. According to Yahoo! Sports, the NFL locked up its media deals in 2021 for $113 billion over 11 years, with CBS, Fox, NBC, Disney and Amazon broadcasting live games. Each team was expected to receive an annual distribution of $335 million for 2021 from shared media, sponsorship and licensing deals. The new contract will give teams roughly $400 million for 2023 under the new media contracts (and sales of white Bengals helmets) and is expected to approach $500 million per team by 2027.

 The broadcast networks and the advertising industry recently assembled for the cattle auction known as “up fronts,” where sales are made on upcoming commercial inventory. According to Standard Media Index, the price for a 30-second commercial on an NFL broadcast will average $480,000 for the regular season. “NBC Sunday Night Football,” the network’s highest rated program, garnered a rate of $622,000 for a 30-second spot, followed by lower prices paid to the big market, NFC-heavy Fox, CBS, ABC/ESPN and the NFL Network.

Additional revenue will come from the introduction of the first NFL-developed mobile streaming service, NFL+. With NFL+, fans can get live, local and primetime games on mobile and tablet devices, live out-of-market preseason games, live game audio (home, away and national calls) for every game of the season and an NFL library of on-demand programming. Cost is $4.99 per month or $39.99 per year.

And for fans wanting to “keep up with the [Pacman] Joneses,” the NFL+ Premium package offers all the NFL+ features, full and condensed game replays and coaches’ film, ad-free. When did coaches’ film start containing ads for Bud Light Seltzer and Nike shoes? Cost for the Premium package will be $9.99 per month or $79.99 per year. Being ad-free, bathroom breaks will require using the pause button.

Now fans can pay to see every NFL game played on their computer, phone or tablet no matter where they are. But it wasn’t always that way when the original blackout rules, developed by the NFL and tailored to television, read like a book of government tax codes. 

In the days when Desi loved Lucy, the NFL blackout policy included all broadcasts on radio and television of any games in the home city of origin and on any TV stations located within 75 miles of the team’s home city. Later, away games were televised into local markets.

Until 1973, sold-out games remained blacked out locally. New Yorkers never saw the 1958 “Greatest Game Ever Played” between the Baltimore Colts and Giants despite a Yankee Stadium sellout. Not accounting for two teams in one market, a Giants versus New York Jets at Shea Stadium was broadcast only when the Jets agreed to lift the blackout to allow Giants fans to view the “road” game. When the San Francisco 49ers visited the Oakland Raiders a few weeks later, Raiders’ owner Al Davis enforced the blackout in the Bay Area. 

President Richard Nixon, a huge Washington Redskins (now Commanders) fan, couldn’t watch home games at The White House and would watch from Camp David or the Florida White House on Key Biscayne. Nixon couldn’t even tape the game.

 A small section of Italy, N.Y., a town closer to Rochester but considered in the Syracuse Area of Dominant Influence (ADI), was located 74 miles from the Buffalo border. Bills games were blacked out in Rochester and Syracuse. 

Restrictions finally were loosened, but as late as 2014, a home game had to be considered sold out within 72 hours of kickoff to be televised locally, based on rules instituted by the NFL and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The NFL was the only major professional sports league that required teams to sell out to broadcast a game on local TV. The NFL’s plan was to sell more tickets, penalizing the no less avid but significantly less affluent football fans. The FCC made sure that the rule applied to cable and satellite TV providers. 

In Cincinnati, where a bad team and tough economic times were present, 75 percent of home games were blacked out and local businesses near Riverfront Stadium suffered. Rams fans in the second largest media market, Los Angeles, were disadvantaged because they played at the 93,607-seat LA Coliseum. In 2013, San Diego and Buffalo still had home games blacked out.

Fan coalitions hounded Congress and united against the NFL and FCC blackout rule, while commissioner Goodell personally lobbied FCC Commissioners on behalf of the owners. Buckling to pressure from bipartisan legislators, the FCC voted unanimously to end the Sports Blackout Rule in September 2014. The NFL quietly lifted their blackout rule days later.

 “We look forward to continuing to grow NFL+ and deepening our relationship with fans across all ages and demographics,” Goodall said, “providing them access to a tremendous amount of NFL content, including the most valuable content in the media industry: live NFL games.” Funny that Goodell didn’t feel that way when he was feeding FCC commissioners full of steak and bull. As fate would have it, lifting the blackout rule ultimately created a massive NFL payday. 

Thanks to NFL+, fans are no longer expected to bring beer and chips to the football watching party. Now they can bring the game. Blackouts are subject to the number of Bud Light Seltzers consumed.