Carlos Cantó, CEO of SPSG Consulting, analyses with Agencia EFE the new television contract signed by the NFL for the next decade.
In the era of television fragmentation, the NFL has scored a touchdown for the next decade: a batch of television contracts for the period 2023-2033 that will bring in 110 billion dollars (93 billion euros), with Amazon as the big addition.
The figure, reported by several US media, doubles what the US championship, the great dominator of traditional television in the country, has been earning until now for showing its games, as 32 of the 50 most watched programmes in the US in 2020 were NFL games, according to Nielsen data.
The approximately $10 billion per season (around €8.48 billion) that the NFL will receive from 2023 onwards far exceeds the $2.66 billion (€2.25 billion) that the NBA receives per year from ESPN and Turner until 2024; the €2.407 billion that UEFA received from broadcasters for the Champions League in the 2018-19 campaign or the €1.864 billion that Spain's LaLiga received in 2018-19 for audiovisual rights.
The purchase of Amazon's exclusive package of Thursday matches - which since 2017 it had been offering alongside the NBC and CBS networks - is a further step in its entry into sports broadcasting, which has also been seen in Europe with the purchase of small packages of the English Premier League and recently of the Champions League in Germany and Italy.
In a context where large audiences are being broken up by the rise of digital platforms, the fact that the US championship is getting this amount shows that live shows have become a key element for the major broadcasters.
The deal "marks a milestone in the history of sport", according to Carlos Cantó, who bases its value on the popularity of the sport in the US market, and the multiplicity of screens, technologies and access platforms.
The value of the deal is based on the popularity of the NFL in the US market, and the multiplicity of screens, technologies and access platforms.
Cantó also highlights an important element of North American sport: that the major leagues "are distributed throughout the year in order to minimise overlaps". "This helps focus attention on a certain number of competitions and leagues at each time of the year," he concludes.
For the CEO of SPSG Consulting, Amazon's major bet is "a piece of the puzzle" of content of the company led by Jeff Bezos to strengthen its commitment to entertainment, in which also " Twitch plays an important role", which is the video streaming platform dominating the video game and increasingly closer to sport.