NFL Does End Run on Telecasts, Retains Game Package for Itself

Wall Street Journal ^ | Jan 30, 2006 | STEFAN FATSIS and JOE FLINT

[abb]

A National Football League decision Friday to keep a new package of games for telecast on its own cable channel reflects the growing desire of professional sports leagues to retain more control of their media destiny.

The NFL passed up the opportunity to sell telecasts of the Thursday and Saturday games to another network for an estimated $400 million in rights fees, in favor of building the value of its NFL Network. Cable titan Comcast Corp. had been the leading contender to obtain the package rights.

Launched in 2004, programming on the NFL Network now consists mostly of news coverage of the league, preseason games and library footage. It is available in only about 35 million homes, roughly one-third of all households with TV sets, mostly on more-expensive "digital" tiers of cable or satellite services.

Adding regular-season games to its programming lineup means the NFL should be able to attract more cable and satellite operators to carry the channel on the less costly "basic" service tiers. That could easily triple the number of homes in which the football channel is seen.

"You've moved it from a highlights channel to one that has must-have programming," says Marc Ganis, a sports consultant who has worked with the NFL.

Other leagues have or are thinking about taking similar steps. The National Basketball Association has its own cable channel that carries games. Both the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball are considering launching their own services. Owning their own sports channels reduces financial dependence of the leagues if broadcast and cable channels at some point balk at constantly rising costs of sports programming.

[abb]

Update and analysis of the Friday story about NFL programming

[normy]

Brilliant! I love the NFL channel, now there's even more reasons to watch.

[G.Mason]

It would be nice if whom ever did the televising would cause there to be less oxygen in the announcers booth.

That way they would have to stop their incessant rambling, every once and a while, to breathe.

Who the hell thought anyone would miss Howard Cosell?

[dhuffman@awod.com]

Yep, the epitomes of discretion and restraint. True conservatives. Or capitalists, or commercialists or post-modern Americans? Tagline...

[dhuffman@awod.com]

Yep, the epitomes of discretion and restraint. True conservatives. Or capitalists, or commercialists or post-modern Americans? Tagline...

[sockmonkey]

So, I take it, the NFL channel is not going to be like the NBA channel. On the NBA channel if you wish to watch a game, you pay $169 for a "league pass", and then the local games are blacked out anyway.

[ZOOKER]

So the NFL makes me buy THEIR channel to watch all the playoff games, huh?

But they still want me (taxpayer) to buy them new stadiums every 10 years, right?

Somebody get a rope...

[joebuck]

"So, I take it, the NFL channel is not going to be like the NBA channel. On the NBA channel if you wish to watch a game, you pay $169 for a "league pass","

Well, according to the above, they are only talking about keeping around 10 games for the NFL channel. (The handfull of Thurs and Saturday games). Currently, NFL Network is part of a Comcast premium package that includes "Encore" and some other niche channels. Right now it is pretty much like ESPN for NFL football only with some old "NFL Films" shows thrown in as filler. If you are a football nut (like me) its pretty good - easily the best NFL coverage out there. It's HD also, for you HD fans out there.