The NFL is the most valuable property in TV. The league draws more viewers to its games than anything else, and as a result, networks shell out billions of dollars in rights agreements. This arrangement means that bad news often gets buried.
But surprisingly, that rule isn’t applying to Brian Flores’ class action lawsuit alleging racial discrimination in the league’s hiring practices. Most of the NFL’s partners are giving the story its due.
Let's start with CBS, which aired a live interview with Flores on its morning show Wednesday. In it, Flores repeated his allegations about sitting for sham interviews, and said the Rooney Rule is about “guys just checking a box.” While networks’ news divisions are separate from its sports divisions, that doesn’t always result in critical coverage. Take the Ray Rice scandal, for example. Before the NFL’s opening night in 2014, Robert Kraft sat on CBS’ same morning show and played clean up for the league. The Patriots’ owner claimed Roger Goodell had no knowledge of the Rice video and said the commissioner was doing a “good job.”
When ESPN covered the story on “Monday Night Football” that evening, Chris Berman infamously interrupted his embarrassing defense of the Ravens to alert everybody the punt was blocked.
ESPN execs aren’t blocking the Flores story from dominating their programming. The network offered wall-to-wall coverage when the story broke late Tuesday afternoon and has devoted 60 percent or more of its shows Wednesday to the lawsuit, according to Awful Announcing’s Ben Koo. There have been frequent interviews with guests and Black NFL analysts as well.
NBC, which will air the Super Bowl next week, also covered the scandal on its signature morning franchise, “Today.”
Of course, this newfound journalistic integrity isn’t spreading to all of the league’s broadcasting partners. FS1 didn’t touch the story Tuesday and has only spent about 30 percent of its time on the allegations Wednesday, Koo notes. The NFL Network, predictably, did just three minutes on Flores Tuesday … three hours after the story broke.
The NFL is sitting on media rights deals worth well over $100 million, and that figure will keep exploding. Beginning next season, Amazon will pay an unfathomable $1 billion per year to exclusively stream Thursday night games. The NFL’s media footprint is only getting bigger. It’s refreshing to see that everybody isn’t in the bag, at least not yet.
