CBS Will Aggressively Pursue NFL Rights Deal

Sean McManus, chairman of CBS Sports says the network plans to aggressively pursue a new TV rights deal with the NFL to televise the American Football Conference game package beyond 2022, when the current deal expires.

During a Q&A session with TVNewCheck Editor Harry Jessell at Wednesday’s TV2020 Monetizing the Future conference in New York, McManus called live NFL games “the most valuable programming on television” and said CBS “will defend its territory and defend the AFC package.”

CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus (r) with TVN’s Harry Jessell. (Photo: Wendy Moger-Bross)

McManus described negotiations with the NFL as the biggest he’s been involved with over the years. NFL TV rights negotiations, he said, are “still the biggest hammer.”

McManus says while specific negotiations on a new deal have not begun, he and other CBS sports officials are continuously in discussions with the NFL on how to improve game telecasts in the areas of telecast production, in-game advertising and scheduling modifications.

“These are not financial discussions,” he says. Those will begin about a year or so before the end of the current deal in 2022.

But while CBS plans to go all out to renew its current NFL deal, that doesn’t mean the network is not rooting for the NFL game telecasts to be successful on the other competing networks.

“All the networks are rooting for each other,” he said. McManus added that when NBC’s Sunday Night Football telecast is up 30% in viewership, as it was last Sunday, all the NFL TV partners benefit.

McManus confirmed that CBS is currently getting $5 million-plus per Super Bowl 30-second ad unit, and said Super Bowl ad sales are “very strong,” but did not offer more specifics.

McManus said while some of the networks are losing money on NFL TV rights deals because of escalating prices reaped by the league, “deficit spending on sports rights makes sense” in some instances.

He pointed to Fox’s $3.3 billion, five-year Thursday Night Football deal that went into effect this season. In that case the NFL will help Fox’s plan to become a more year around all-sports network. “That dynamic was worth it for Fox, for us it wasn’t,” indicating why CBS did not try to reup its previous TNF deal.

McManus was asked about potential bidding competition for the next NFL TV rights deal from digital platforms like Amazon and Twitter, among others. He said while it is not out of the realm of possibility that a digital platform might make a massive bid to win the main rights, he does not believe the NFL would abandon the broadcast networks due to their large audience reach.

“The NFL would have to think hard about that,” he said. “It would be a risk for the NFL.”

Right now, the NFL is seeing a resurgence in TV viewership. Ratings over the first six week are up overall over the same period last season. McManus says there are several reasons for that.

He says in addition to better matchups, there are a couple of new teams in the mix like the Kansas City Chiefs that are drawing viewer attention. He says another draw has been the strong play of several younger quarterbacks. He also believes the National Anthem controversy has been put on the back burner. And he said he thinks with all of the political divisiveness that more people are turning to NFL football as an escape.

Commenting on why CBS chose to partner with Turner on the long-term TV rights deal to televise the annual NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship tournament rather than bid alone, McManus said he wasn’t sure the network would have been able to outbid ESPN for the tournament without a cable partner.

He said ESPN would have been able to bid more for the package head-to-head because it can draw on its subscriber fee revenue, which CBS doesn’t have. So CBS partnered with cable network owner Turner.

The joint bid was attractive to the NCAA because combined CBS and Turner’s three cable networks could televise all the first round games live, something that ESPN could have done with its multiple ESPN cable networks.

“Either we would have to share the rights to the tournament or not get it at all,” McManus said.

CBS and Turner in 2016 extended their TV rights deal for the tournament through 2032. Under the terms of the newly extended deal, CBS and Turner will pay the NCAA about $1 billion annually for the TV rights for the tournament.

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