Comcast’s Brian Roberts is feeling a gigantic cost squeeze—fromthe renewal of NBC’s “NFL SundayNight Football” to ESPN’s pressure to renegotiate NFL carriage deals with Comcast’s cable operations. (AFP/Getty Images)
The NFL is getting ready to tackle NBC for more cash, The Post has learned.
The two parties are holding early-stage talks about renewing “Sunday Night Football,” a package that has been with NBC since 2006 and is the cornerstone of the fourth-ranked network’s prime-time schedule.
While the current deal doesn’t expire until 2013, sources said NBC wants to get a deal done early as it prepares to negotiate higher fees from cable and satellite operators for the right to retransmit its local stations.
“NFL is squeezing the networks for more money,” said one person close to the talks. “They know that broadcast partners will be willing to go a little higher if they can extract it from retrans [agreements].”
NBC, part of cable giant Comcast, is also interested in wrapping up a deal to extend its contract before its exclusive negotiating period runs out next year.
Moreover, Comcast has an eye on using football coverage to boost its Versus cable sports network, which is relaunching as NBC Sports in January, sources added.
The NFL talks come just months after Walt Disney’s ESPN agreed to a whopping 70 percent increase to keep “Monday Night Football” on the cable sports network, paying a reported $15 billion price tag over eight years.
ESPN is also expected to begin talks with cable and satellite companies like Comcast about paying more to carry the sports powerhouse and its own highly priced NFL package, along with Disney’s other non-sports channels such as ABC and Disney Channel.
Earlier this summer, Comcast paid an outsized $4.4 billion for future rights to air the Olympics on NBC. It is also spending big to develop entertainment pilots and allocating millions for local news.
While it’s unclear what NBC parent Comcast will have to pay to renew football, it’s clear which party has the leverage.
“The only show NBC has in prime time is football; it’s the only thing that keeps them in the demos and the NFL totally knows it,” said one source close to talks.
Since the start of the fall TV season, NBC has been the only major network to lose viewers. Among viewers aged 18 to 49, a key viewing category for advertisers, NBC is down 7 percent. Meanwhile, Fox is up 15 percent and CBS 5 percent; ABC is flat. (News Corp. owns Fox and The Post.)
NBC will air the Super Bowl in February and will use it to promote its mid-season shows to get some traction in prime time.
An NBC spokesman said: “We’re in the middle of the NFL season. We talk to the NFL every day.”
The NFL declined to comment.
NBC reportedly pays around $600 million a year to carry NFL games, including flex scheduling which gives it the choice of the best games — a point negotiated by former sports boss,Dick Ebersol.
A new deal would likely involve some digital rights so that Comcast/NBC can offer its customers the same content on mobile and online as it does on the TV screen.