This post will automatically feed through to Twitter but I’m extending my Twitter sabbatical indefinitely and won’t be looking at Twitter mentions.
Andrew Marchand reports that “the Scott Boras of Sports Media” former super-agent turned head of the WWE Nick Khan thinks that Amazon will score a Thursday Night Football exclusive.
With the NFL, Khan believes that Amazon could end up with “Thursday Night Football”, while the incumbent networks (Fox/CBS on Sunday afternoons, NBC on Sunday Night and ESPN on Mondays) keep their current TV packages.
“It feels like that is going to be the first time that a digital player gets an entire season package exclusively,” Khan said. “That is how it feels like it is playing out, but we will all see.”
The key word there is “exclusively.” The main reason the traditional TV networks have turned their noses up at the Thursday Night Package (at least as far as public posturing) is because the games are not exclusive since they also air on NFL Network.
As I wrote last week, the NFL Network is a great business that’s still easily bringing in over a $1 billion a year for the league. But it’s a business that presents problems with TV partners and rights fees when it comes to Thursday night package because those games aren’t exclusive.
It wouldn’t be truly exclusive for Amazon either, unless Amazon bought the NFL Network. That’d be very surprising to me and a huge, fun news cycle. I’d be pretty surprised if Amazon even became the exclusive partner with the NFL Network for the Thursday package as Fox has been the past couple of years, but as Khan says, “we will all see.”
wasn’t the original reason for starting NFL Network was to get it sold? I remember someone telling me that a long time ago.
I have no knowledge about that but I’d guess the original reason was to make more money and a sale is a path to that. A sale now might make sense for the NFL, just think there’s a better business case for buying with one of the traditional TV partners. The Amazon case seems almost entirely “because they can.”