New York Times.<\/a><\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has spoken about the expanding the current rights deals for the league, especially considering all the new players in the space since signing the last contract in 2021. At that point, Netflix wasn\u2019t even streaming live sports and YouTube wasn\u2019t involved in major deals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve all seen the media landscape is changing dramatically,\u201d Goodell said at a press conference ahead of Super Bowl LX. \u201cNew platforms that didn\u2019t exist five years ago \u2014 10 years ago, for sure \u2014 exist. That\u2019s where our fans are in many cases, particularly the younger demographics.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the UFC was negotiating a new rights deal in 2025, the promotion was deep into talks with Netflix after the streamer was interested in obtaining the 12 to 13 major \u201cpay-per-view\u201d events per year after getting into the boxing business with several marquee fights including Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson and the Canelo Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford card.<\/p>\n
In the end, Paramount swooped in at the 11th hour to offer $1.1 billion per year to land the UFC\u2019s entire broadcast rights package, which some critics believed was overpaying. But Paramount celebrated the deal after UFC 324 \u2014 the first event to air on Paramount+ \u2014 brought in nearly 5 million viewers, which was a new record for an exclusive live event airing on the network.<\/p>\n
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Obviously, the NFL\u2019s ratings dwarf every other sporting event in the United States, which is why the league takes such a close look at what other sports are being paid. During the 2025 season, the NFL was averaging 18.7 million viewers, which was the biggest audience for the league since 1989.<\/p>\n
Paramount also has a deal with the NFL and it\u2019s expected the network will pony up whatever increase is needed to keep football airing there for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as they indicate they want to sit down and have a legit conversation about the future, we\u2019ll be excited to sit down and have those conversations and figure out how we can further strengthen the partnership,\u201d David Berson, the president of CBS Sports, told the New York Times.<\/p>\n
While the UFC\u2019s $7.7 billion deal isn\u2019t anywhere close to what the NFL makes, that doesn\u2019t mean the increases paid to the MMA promotion doesn\u2019t affect what other sports may seek in future negotiations.<\/p>\n
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Between the UFC and NBA reaching historic heights with new broadcast deals, the NFL is likely to reset the market with rights fees growing even higher if these new deals get locked down before the 2026 season kicks off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NFL is widely recognized as the biggest ratings driver among all the major sports but the league…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,49822,435,593,14627,28598,85,41710,787],"class_list":{"0":"post-471673","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-broadcast-rights","11":"tag-netflix","12":"tag-nfl","13":"tag-paramount","14":"tag-roger-goodell","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-the-nfl","17":"tag-ufc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}