NFL to discuss live game rights with new media partners

The NFL plans to hold talks with non-traditional media companies to potentially sell them the rights to a live game, NFL Media chief Hans Schroeder told CNBC Sport on Friday.

“We have other people that are both partners in a smaller sense — maybe not a full package — or people that still are in the media landscape somewhere that would like to be an NFL live game partner,” Schroeder said in an interview from Radio Row ahead of Super Bowl LX in San Francisco.

“We’re going to have those conversations,” he added. “We want to understand all our options and how to think about the best model for us, for our fans, for our teams going forward. So to your question, you know, we’re going to listen and probably have a lot of different people that want to have a conversation with us. That’s very fortunate. We say that humbly, and we’re going to make sure we have those conversations to understand.”

Schroeder didn’t offer details on which companies could be interested in buying a live game. The NFL sold a week one game to YouTube last season for about $100 million — a one-off strategy that it could replicate with other digital platforms. The societal-wide shift to streaming has made digital a comparable rival to broadcast TV, which has long been the league’s preferred distribution strategy due to its reach.

“Now you see these big digital platforms that can reach broadcast level audiences,” Schroeder said. “That just creates more optionality.”

The NFL and its traditional media partners — Disney, Paramount Global, Comcast‘s NBCUniversal and Amazon — will likely begin discussing a new media rights later this year, four years ahead of the current agreement’s opt-out clause, according to people familiar with the matter. Schroeder echoed NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s comments to CNBC in September that the league would be open to having those talks.

“I’m sure they’re doing work on their end when the time’s right, because they either want to sort of press the ‘engage’ button or the commissioner says, ‘Hey, let’s go do this,'” Schroeder said.

The NFL is expanding the number of international games to nine next season — a record high. The league may sell a new package of some of those games to a media partner as soon as next year, he said.

“That’ll be one of the things we look at,” Schroeder said.