After Disney told investors last week that ESPN and the NFL had not entered any discussions regarding an early media rights renewal, it appears Fox is on the same page.<\/p>\n
During an earnings call on Monday morning, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch told investors the network has not yet engaged the NFL in media rights negotiations, according to Brian Steinberg of Variety. The NFL was hoping to negotiate new deals with its broadcast partners this offseason, securing higher rights fees now in return for eliminating its exit option at the end of the decade. It appears increasingly unlikely<\/a> that those deals will come to fruition prior to the upcoming season.<\/p>\n The news from Murdoch comes shortly after the\u00a0Wall Street Journal published a bombshell report<\/a> detailing a February dinner in which Fox Corporation patriarch Rupert Murdoch asked President Donald Trump to look into the NFL\u2019s media rights practices as more games move from traditional television to streaming. Following the dinner, both the FCC<\/a> and DOJ<\/a> launched separate investigations into sports fragmentation, particularly targeting the NFL. Many observers have credited the federal pressure for delaying the NFL\u2019s original intentions to strike new TV deals this offseason.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Of course, the\u00a0Journal report has also led to speculation<\/a> that the NFL could be upset at Fox for the network\u2019s apparent effort to derail negotiations. In response to that sentiment, Lachlan Murdoch told investors, \u201cThere is no tension really with the NFL.\u201d The CEO continued that there\u2019s a desire from his network to broaden its relationship with the NFL, but it would have to come at the right price for shareholders.<\/p>\n These comments would seem to echo Murdoch\u2019s previous shifts on the topic. Last year, Murdoch told investors that he would like to see Fox expand its partnership<\/a> with the NFL, even going so far as to say the network was preparing to \u201crebalance\u201d its sports portfolio<\/a> to afford more expensive NFL rights. But earlier this year, Murdoch shifted tone, stating he believed Fox was already paying \u201cmarket\u201d rate<\/a> for the NFL. His remarks on Monday strike a balance between the two positions.<\/p>\n On Monday, Murdoch also revealed that Fox would receive two additional NFL games<\/a> this regular season: the first a Week 10 game from Munich that will create the first ever NFL \u201ctripleheader\u201d on broadcast television, and the second a Saturday game during Week 15.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The post Murdoch: \u2018No substantive discussion\u2019 between Fox, NFL on media rights<\/a> appeared first on Awful Announcing<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Disney told investors last week that ESPN and the NFL had not entered any discussions regarding an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[244839,49,48,374,56584,71062,40763,514,17833,82],"class_list":["post-662508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-brian-steinberg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fox","tag-fox-corporation","tag-lachlan-murdoch","tag-media-rights","tag-nfl","tag-rupert-murdoch","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}