Pigskin prexy Roger Goodell struck gold yesterday, inking a lucrative, nine-year extension of the NFL’s television rights deal — but it may be football fans that end up footing the bill.
Under the extension, which starts in 2014 and runs through 2022, the NFL will pocket a total of $4.9 billion a year from ABC, CBS, Fox and ESPN, a 60 percent jump from the $3 billion a year it gets under its current deal.
While Goodell crowed about the NFL’s deal and how it kept the country’s No. 1 sport on free TV, it doesn’t mean it will come free to fans.
The networks, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox will be looking to diffuse the 60 percent price hike in rights fees by hitting up distributors for more retransmission cash for carriage of their stations, and that means they’ll be hiking fees to consumers yet again.
(Fox is owned by News Corp., which also owns The Post.)
Michael Morris, a media analyst at Davenport, told The Post, “In general, rising sports costs are a big pressure on the networks. They’re being passed on to distributors.”
While content providers argue that increased sports fees don’t necessarily have to mean bigger bills for cable consumers, pointing to distributors’ big margins, one source said: “There is not a cable, satellite or telecom who will let the margins slide because of an NFL deal.”
David Hill, chairman and CEO, Fox Sports media group, said in a statement, “When you’re talking about the NFL on TV, you’re talking about one of the most remarkable phenomenons in the entertainment world, averaging over 20 million viewers a game on Fox.”
The additional cost, however, will likely eat up the retransmission fees distributors have begun paying networks to carry their stations.
Each network is paying around $1 billion for a variety of football rights packages. ESPN earlier agreed to a $1.9 billion deal to extend its rights.
Networks will also be looking to get bigger fees on advertising packages and, because of a new element of their NFL deals, will be able to start selling ads on tablets.
A variety of cable and satellite operators declined to comment on NFL’s new deal.