The 2022 NFL Season Media Preview
There are a myriad of ways to quantify the NFL’s incredible popularity, but the most telling figures lie in the insane amount of money that’s tied up in TV deals and broadcast booths.
Let’s start here: the NFL completed deals with networks and Amazon this offseason that total $110 billion over 11 years. That outrageous number explains why the league doesn’t seem to be all that concerned about blowback emanating from an array of high-profile off-field scandals, from Deshaun Watson’s alleged serial sexual misconduct to Congress’ investigation into the Washington Commanders’ toxic workplace culture. Garnering more than $10 billion annually in media rights deals alone would make any organization feel teflon.
But that’s especially the case with the NFL, whose games accounted for 75 of the 100 most-watched TV shows last year. It’s true that NFL ratings are declining in comparison to previous years. But they’re dropping at a much slower rate than everything else, including award shows, primetime dramas and other sports.
That means the gap between the NFL and other entertainment is only expanding. The league is stronger than ever.
“Across the board, cable companies and broadcast networks are figuring out what they can make money on when the ratings are going down, and the NFL doesn't have that issue,” Ben Koo, the founder of Awful Announcing, told me on my “Sports Media Mayhem” podcast. “The NFL is staying above everyone else.”
The NFL’s TV dominance was on full display this offseason with all of the jaw-dropping deals handed out to broadcasters and analysts. Tom Brady’s 10-year, $375 million agreement with FOX leads the pack (the deal won’t go into effect until he retires), but nearly every top announcer is slated to earn more than $10 million annually.
Tony Romo is raking in $18 million per year from CBS, Troy Aikman will make $19 million annually with ESPN, and Joe Buck will take home $15 million per year from the WorldWide Leader. The Manning Brothers are making about $20 million combined, meaning ESPN will spend more than $50 million on four broadcasters this season.
Over at Amazon, which will exclusively stream “Thursday Night Football” for a cool $1 billion annually, Al Michaels will make $10 million each season, and his partner, Kirk Herbstreit, is making around $20 million between Amazon and ESPN.
Cris Collinsworth, Michaels’ old partner on NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” takes in $12.5 million annually.
These guys are being paid so much, because they are the biggest stars on each of their network’s biggest show, the NFL. Jerry Seinfeld was believed to make $1 million per show at the apex of “Seinfeld’s” popularity in the mid-1990s. The salaries of Romo, Aikman, Collinsworth and the rest are in line with that figure. (Brady, of course, blows everyone away at $37.5 million annually, though we’ll see if he ever actually steps into the booth.)
For years, Roger Goodell has touted his goal to generate $25 billion in annual revenue, and the NFL is on track to reach that mark in 2027. The league has survived a domestic violence crisis, ownership scandals and attacks from the President of the United States. At this juncture, the NFL is unstoppable.
The league’s insane broadcasting offseason tells the story.
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The NFL’s gerontocracy problem: There is a lot of discussion about the gerontocracy problem in our politics. But the NFL is facing the same issue.
As Sports Business Journal’s Ben Fischer explains in a recent feature story, the average age of an NFL controlling owner is 72, and many of the league’s most influential figures are older than that. For example: Robert Kraft is 81, Jerry Jones is 80 and Stan Kroenke is 75.
While some of the league’s billionaire moguls have firm succession plans — Jonathan Kraft and Stephen Jones are well-respected and already handle important league business — there is a lot of murkiness about who will be running the league going forward. In other words, there are a bunch of Logan Roys at the top of the NFL.
The league better hope that doesn’t mean there are also a lot of Kendall Roys lying around.
“To the NFL's great credit, one of the reasons it's been so successful for going on a century is that these owners have tended to be pretty good at it. But the franchises are bigger in value now. Just because you're wealthy doesn't mean you're good at running a football team,” said Fischer on Sports Media Mayhem. “I think we can all point to some examples from that. Just because your father was a successful owner in the NFL doesn't mean you're going to. Without some careful strategic approaches to this, the NFL could wake up one day and have a totally different group of owners, and they're at the very least new, and at the very worst, just not as good as their dads.”
With $110 billion locked up in media revenue over the next decade — as well as billions from ticket sales, licensing deals, etc — the NFL is the strongest it’s ever been. It will be up to the kids to build on their fathers’ successes.
The history of second-generational wealth indicates they may not be up to the task.
Why is the NFL going to Amazon?: Amazon’s pursuit of the NFL makes perfect sense. Exclusively streaming TNF is an excellent way to attract millions of more eyeballs to their products and streaming service, Amazon Prime.
But why is the NFL doing it?
As Koo explained to me, the league is receiving more money from Amazon for TNF than it was getting from the networks, and streaming is the next logical frontier in its quest for complete media domination.
It also doesn’t hurt that Amazon almost literally prints cash. It’s hard to imagine another outlet pouring more money into the TNF broadcast and promotion.
“When they looked at their options, this was their final step in monetizing Thursday Night Football,” said Koo. “To get $1 billion is absolutely massive. I think in previous deals they were closer to $600 million per year. For them, it's more of getting the money, and also knowing Amazon was going to sign a long-term deal, and they are fully invested in this.”
Some boomers may now struggle to find TNF, but the NFL has rightfully decided that small tradeoff is worth the big gains.
Is Romo still the best?: This will be Jim Nantz and Romo’s sixth year together in the booth, which makes them the longest-tenured No. 1 team on the same network. But are they still the gold standard?
According to Awful Announcing’s Andrew Bucholtz, the answer is “yes.”
“They have the advantage of entering the season with some stability,” he said on Sports Media Mayhem. “Obviously, Buck and Aikman have a long history of working together, but they're at a new network and have a new producing team. I think that could be good for them, but there's going to be a little bit of adaptation there. Then with everybody else, there's something new going on: one new pairing, one new face, etc. Nantz and Romo have been very good over the last few years, and they clicked very, very early on. I think they've continued to build on that, and they'll do well again this year.”