YouTube, Netflix, reportedly expected to split NFL's new package

The seemingly conflicting reporting on whether YouTube or Netflix would end up with the new five-game NFL rights package is apparently because both will get a piece.

Alex Sherman of CNBC reported Thursday that YouTube and Netflix are expected to split the four NFL game windows that ESPN relinquished as part of its deal to acquire NFL Network. Both streamers had been discussed as contenders for all or part of that inventory, which has been shopped along with the league’s International Series game from Australia as part of a new five-game rights package. (Sherman also wrote that the league is “expected to add an additional game for one of the big global streamers,” presumably the Australia matchup.)

Netflix had been previously linked by Jessica Toonkel and Joe Flint of The Wall Street Journal to the NFL’s possible Thanksgiving Eve game and to the Australia matchup, with the acquisition of those rights constituting an expansion of its current package from two to four games. The current Netflix NFL rights deal, which includes up to two Christmas Day games per year, expires after this season.

YouTube has been reported by multiple outlets as a frontrunner for the full five-game package, with Ryan Glasspiegel of Front Office Sports reporting that the Google-owned company had entered into a contract review stage with the league. There had been few if any indications that YouTube would receive only a portion of the inventory, rather than all of it.

Any deal with one or both streamers would come as the NFL faces a federal investigation into its deals with streaming companies, part of a mounting backlash against sports on streaming services being cheerled by NFL broadcast partner Fox Corporation.

The NFL has shown few if any signs of being cowed by the federal scrutiny, defending itself by noting that the overwhelming majority of its games are carried on broadcast television. In a Vanity Fair profile published this week, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said that one could argue Netflix is “bigger than some of the networks” and that the league had “learned a lot” from YouTube, which has “done an amazing job” with its Sunday Ticket out-of-market package.

Another NFL executive, VP/broadcast planning Mike North, said in a podcast last week that shifting the four ex-ESPN game windows to streaming could be seen as “more fan-friendly,” as streamers are “arguably more widely distributed” than ESPN, which he noted is “down to 50 million homes.”

It is still not entirely clear what the five-game inventory will include, beyond the Australia game. Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk reported last month that the NFL had presented bidders with a menu of potential options from which to choose, including a second Black Friday game and a Christmas Eve window.

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