The NFL's New Deal And Ramifications For Golf

With the NFL having secured $100 billion and change over the next decade from its major media conglomerate partners, the PGA Tour knows who is boss. Especially on Sundays.

But golf’s cable and linear-TV heavy audience got great news: the rush to streaming may slow down a bit. And that’s fine for a viewing audience that still values large screen viewing, easy channel flipping and only paying once for the “product”.

While the NFL has out clauses if the “platforms” change, the parties agreed to let people to watch wherever they like.

You like streaming? You’ll be able to watch on your preferred app. Enjoy no crashes and easy channel flipping? You’re good.

This is welcome news for those who prefer something that works versus the latest thing that needs work. As Kevin Draper wrote for the New York Times, the NFL has solidified “linear” television’s place for another decade:

Streaming is the present of movies and TV series and the future of sports, and growth in that sector is what is currently rewarded by Wall Street. But the number of people who pay to stream sports, and the amounts they pay, are dwarfed by the tens of millions of American households that still spend $50, $100 or even $150 each month for a television package.

The agreements cement the N.F.L.’s status as the richest sports league in the world and once again demonstrate that its programming is the keystone that keeps the crumbling traditional television ecosystem from falling apart completely.

The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch saw the deal as a victory for streaming with increased “inventory” but—and there’s always a but—say goodbye to low rates:

Let’s start with the bottom line for you as a fan: If you want to watch every NFL game, it’s going to cost you additional money. That’s the reality of the NFL extending its game inventory to streaming properties. The league attempted to navigate the new digital landscape by providing game inventory for its traditional over-the-air partners (CBS, NBC and Fox), extending inventory for its longtime cable partner (ESPN), and opening up a new landscape in the streaming space.

So if you are going all in on cord-cutting to watch golf, expect similar inventory expansion under the next TV deal. But also expect to pay more that the current prices for Peacock, Disney+, ESPN+ and Paramount+.

A bigger headache for the Tour: scheduling. All signs point to the NFL cutting into the PGA Tour’s west coast swing. That’s depressing news as we come off another strong west coast and Florida swing. This is the PGA Tour’s meat and potatoes. I mean, Super Season.

Peter King has reported on a likely move to 17-games in 2021 and certainly by the start of the new deal. The expansion translates to at least another week in the NFL season and a February 13th, 2022 Super Bowl in Los Angeles.

• The league calendar gets pushed back one week, with a likely Feb. 13 Super Bowl in Los Angeles. No extra bye—17 games in 18 weekends. Super Bowl LVI, originally scheduled for Feb. 6, 2022 and airing on NBC, has not been officially moved yet. The league hasn’t said a word about moving the game to officials in Los Angeles. But the NFL won’t start the season on the ratings-quashing Labor Day Weekend, and the league doesn’t want to add an extra regular-season bye week. So that adds up to Feb. 13, which would be the latest Super Bowl in history.

Unresolved is the possibility of another bye week and an even later Super Bowl. Also, another clause opens up the possibility of an 18-game schedule at some point in the deal, almost assuredly turning all but on February Sunday over to the NFL.

The PGA Tour has been unwilling to move off of playoff Sundays with Hawaii’s final rounds or NFC/AFC Championship Sunday during the American Express. The events lure minuscule audiences. Saturday or Monday finishes seem obvious but have been resisted. And now that dilemma may expand by several key weeks during some of the season’s highest rated telecasts.

As for how all of this works for the networks, NBC Universal’s Mark Lazarus summed up one network perspective.

In an email to the NBC “Team” about the NFL deal, he writes:

This deal also exemplifies one of the ways that the strength and breadth of our portfolio gives us a distinct advantage over our competitors. In the short time we’ve existed as a unified group, we have already seen the collective power of our brands when we function as a unit. Individually, each of our networks and platforms may have fierce competition in the marketplace, but together, our combined portfolio provides a value proposition to creators, partners and audiences that is unparalleled.    

NBC and Telemundo are powerful engines that reach mass audiences giving us broad scale that we can leverage; our cable networks have fandom like no other, providing passionate and engaged audiences; and Peacock is the home of curated live and on-demand content giving us access to new audiences that have adapted to streaming. As we work together to tap into the strengths of each element of our portfolio, we’re creating what we like to call an “infinity loop” that cycles viewers through our ecosystem, driving audiences from one platform to the next and building viewership across them all.

I’m old enough to remember the days when they said all of this in one word: synergy.