NFL

The National Football League is in advanced talks to give Google’s YouTube exclusive rights to NFL Sunday Ticket, a subscription-only package that allows football fans to watch most Sunday afternoon games, people familiar with the matter said. An agreement could be reached as early as Wednesday, following a meeting of NFL owners, who approve rights deals.

The National Football League said it worked with Nielsen on a special study looking at viewing of its games on Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 24) in group settings and found its games reach an average of more than 20 million additional viewers. According to the study, the games had an average-minute audience of 44.1 million viewers, up 31% from the 33.6 million Nielsen initially reported.

Talks for Sunday Ticket are expected to spill into next year, as Apple faces increased competition from Google for the league’s last available TV rights.

The Cowboys 28-20 victory on Fox averaged 42 million viewers, according to Nielsen, surpassing the 41.55 million average for the Dec. 3, 1990, Monday night game between the Giants and San Francisco 49ers on ABC. Average viewer record numbers date to 1988.

The teaming brings together the media division of the dominant sports league in the U.S. with the new sports arm of the David Ellison-led entity behind Top Gun: Maverick and a range of other top film, TV and streaming titles.

CBS, Fox and NBC will all be paying tribute to former coach and Hall of Fame sportscaster John Madden when they broadcast National Football League games on Thanksgiving Day. Each network will lead into their games with a recording of Madden — who called 20 Thanksgiving Day games over the course of his career — talking about the relationship the holiday has with football. Each network will also create segments about the coach that will appear during their games.

Boston Red Sox owner John Henry is seen as a possible bidder for the Washington Commanders as the investing tycoon moves to sell his UK-based soccer team Liverpool, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation. Henry’s Fenway Sports Group has hired Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to unload Liverpool in a deal that’s expected to fetch between $4 billion and $5 billion, the sources say.

A day after the Washington Commanders announced that owners Daniel and Tanya Snyder are considering selling the team, speculation about a potential buyer was widespread, and at least one prominent name was confirmed as having interest: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Media entrepreneur Byron Allen is preparing a bid for the Washington Commanders in what would be his second attempt this year to acquire a National Football League franchise, according to people familiar with the matter. Allen is working with an investor group, according to people familiar with his ambitions who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. If Allen succeeds buying the Commanders, he would be the first Black majority owner of an NFL team.

The team announced the surprising decision Wednesday to enlist Bank of America Securities’ services. Asked if Dan and Tanya Snyder were considering selling part or all of the team, a spokesperson said, “We are exploring all options.”

The league announced Tuesday that Amazon Prime Video will stream a game on the day after Thanksgiving. The first Black Friday game will kick off at 3 p.m. ET on Nov. 24, 2023. The teams will be announced in May when the regular-season schedule is expected to be released.

Terry Bradshaw, a Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback and one of the co-hosts on Fox NFL Sunday, revealed Sunday on air that he has battled cancer twice in the last year. Bradshaw had an incident during the pregame show last week and addressed them on Sunday’s episode before the rest of the schedule kicked off.

Like bruising touchdowns and highflying catches, serious injuries and specifically head injuries are staples of the football experience — and the football broadcast. So when Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa hit the turf Thursday night, suffering what appeared to be his second head injury in five days, it provided the first test of how Amazon, which is paying more than $1 billion to the NFL to broadcast Thursday night games, would handle what has become a difficult balancing act for the league’s media partners.

The NFL Pro Bowl — the pro football league’s annual all-star game pitting the best from the AFC and NFC — will transition into but one part of “The Pro Bowl Games” starting in 2023. Paramount to that change-up, the game played at the end of Pro Bowl week will now, officially, be a flag football contest involving no proper tackling.

With the National Hurricane Center predicting a “near worst-case scenario” when Hurricane Ian is forecast to slam ashore in Tampa Bay Thursday, Tom Brady and the Buccaneers have decided to decamp to Miami to for their scheduled Sunday Night Football home game this weekend against Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. The marquee matchup is set to be held at Tampa’s Raymonds James Stadium and broadcast on NBC at 8:20 p.m. ET.

Sentiments among NFL team owners regarding Daniel Snyder’s ownership of the Washington Commanders have shifted significantly, as they await the findings of both a congressional investigation and a league-commissioned probe into allegations of misconduct by him and his team. Multiple owners said in recent days that they believe serious consideration may be given to attempting to oust Snyder from the league’s ownership ranks, either by convincing him to sell his franchise or by voting to remove him.

The singer, who declined to perform in the 2019 Super Bowl halftime show out of solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, will headline the 2023 Super Bowl, the NFL announced Sunday along with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation and Apple Music. Rihanna posted an image on Instagram of an arm outstretched holding an NFL football.

The streamer, which once shared “Thursday Night Football” games with Fox, now has exclusive rights to that action and must convince some pigskin Luddites to plug into broadband. Streaming Thursday Night Football, after all, will require a different kind of remote — and familiarity with a home screen, not a cable box. “It is going to be a behavioral shift for people,” acknowledges Jay Marine, VP of Prime Video and its global head of sports. “Our job is to make sure they are able to find Thursday Night Football at its new home and make it as easy as possible to get into the Prime Video app and start streaming.”

Brands spent an estimated $250.4 million on advertising on NFL games during the first week of the season, according to an analysis by ad platform EDO. The spending was up 8.1% from the first week of last season and 21.7% from 2020, EDO said. The biggest spending category was automotive at $30.3 million, with Toyota, Chevrolet and Hyundai among the brands with football flights. Auto was followed by insurance and consumer packaged goods.

With streaming services eager to acquire live content, professional sports leagues in the U.S. are taking the next steps. The NFL will be the latest with Amazon Prime Video’s debut of “Thursday Night Football” when the Los Angeles Chargers take on the Kansas City Chiefs.

Sports leagues are launching new digital events and competitions to connect audiences with their name and brand — even if it means viewers won’t always be watching the sport itself. Leagues are seeking out a newer and younger audience to gain more ground in our ever-more-online daily lives. Above: A rendering of the new TGL golf league with the PGA Tour. (Photo courtesy of TMRW Sports Group)

Amazon paid big bucks for the exclusive national broadcast rights to stream NFL Thursday Night Football starting this season, but 48% of the viewership for Prime Video’s first preseason game came via local broadcast, according to TVB. Stations in San Francisco and Houston delivered 494,135 impressions.

Ahead of Thursday night’s kickoff to the NFL season, streaming bundle Hulu + Live TV is offering a $20 discount for three months of service for new and select returning subscribers. The discount runs through just before midnight on Oct. 5. It gives subscribers $20 off for three months on their bill for the Disney-run pay-TV service. Hulu + Live TV offers more than 75 live channels as well as sibling streaming outlets Disney+ and ESPN+, which were recently added at no extra cost for Hulu’s live TV subscribers.

As marketer interest in other TV programming declines, demand for pro football continues its upward trajectory and has had a knock-on effect for other leagues like the NBA and NHL.

CBS’ 60 Minutes rerun drew 6.6 million total viewers and a 0.9 demo rating, topping Sunday in both measures. Big Brother in turn is eyeing its best Sunday audience of Season 24 (4.1 million), though it was down a tick in the demo week-to-week (to a 0.7).

The 2022 NFL season kicks off Thursday, Sept. 8, with the defending champion Los Angeles Rams playing the Buffalo Bills on NBC and Peacock. Coverage begins at 7 p.m.

Gambling operators have been pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the pursuit of new customers as more states have adopted online sports betting. Now, those companies are under pressure to rein in spending because they have said they plan to turn a profit sometime next year. The college football and NFL seasons — a prime time to advertise and entice more people to gamble — will be a balancing act on the path to profitability for companies such as FanDuel Group, DraftKings and BetMGM, the market leaders. Other competitors also are scrutinizing their bottom lines.

DirecTV is reportedly close to securing the rights from Amazon to show NFL Thursday Night Football in restaurants and bars. The news is a relief to establishment owners who claim streaming just doesn’t work in multi-TV environments because of latency issues.

The NFL has launched a league-branded subscription streaming outlet featuring live mobile rights once controlled by Verizon. NFL+, as the new service is known, is available in two versions. The basic one costs $5 a month (or $40 a year), while the premium tier is $10 a month, or $80 a year.

The NFL’s venerable “Sunday Ticket” package is poised to jump from satellite to streaming. “I clearly believe we’ll be moving to a streaming service,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said during an interview Friday with CNBC, an overt nod by the league to long-simmering conversations about the next step for the package, which has been held for years by DirecTV and broadcasts regular-season games that aren’t available on local stations.

The NFL is finding a new home for its Sunday Ticket package, and the bidding is down to two of the world’s largest tech companies and one of the world’s largest media conglomerates. Amazon, Apple and Disney are all vying for the out-of-market set, which the NFL reportedly wants to shift at least partly to a streaming property. The league is seeking $2.5 billion to $3 billion annually for Sunday Ticket.

Fox Sports, a few weeks after making a splash by announcing Tom Brady would be joining the network as an NFL analyst when his playing career is over, has confirmed its lead announcing talent for 2022. As expected, Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen have been named lead play-by-play announcer and analyst, replacing Joe Buck and Troy Aikman. In a stunning move prior to the Brady bombshell, Fox parted ways with Buck and Aikman after more than 20 years, with the pair shifting to ESPN’s Monday Night Football.

The National Football League plans to launch its own streaming service in July, according to a report from the NFL owner meeting by Sports Business Journal. NFL Plus will feature live games on mobile phones and tablets and is expected cost about $5 monthly. The games would be the same game fans can see on TV in their local markets.