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Onward,

Michael Beach

How Football Ate Hollywood

Puck published a line in April that belongs on every media executive's wall: "One of the biggest threats to the film and TV industry maybe isn't A.I. or YouTube or whatever studio Larry Ellison is consolidating today. It's football."

MoffettNathanson projects the NFL's new media rights will hit $16B per year, 58% higher than today. That's $6B more annually. And networks can't grow their way out of it. MoffettNathanson says they'll "offset higher NFL costs through a reallocation of content budgets."

Translation: Less money for scripted TV, film, and every sport that isn't the NFL.

Let's break it down into four big questions:
1) How much does the NFL cost TV networks today?
2) What will the next deal look like?
3) Why does the NFL have so much leverage?
4) What share of content spending goes to the NFL?

How much does the NFL cost TV networks today?

Quick answer: About $10B per year, split across six partners.

NFL media rights by network:
1) ESPN - $2.7B
2) Fox - $2.3B
3) NBC - $2.2B
4) CBS - $2.1B
5) Amazon - $1.0B
6) Netflix - $150M
7) Total - $10.5B

Despite shifts in how people watch, 87% of NFL games still air on broadcast TV.

The average game window costs media companies $92M.

Cost per unique game window:
1) ESPN/ABC - $135M
2) NBC - $116M
3) Average - $92M
4) Fox - $82M
5) CBS - $75M
6) Netflix - $75M
7) Amazon - $59M

But it is most interesting when you add in cost and viewership.

Cost per unique viewer per game:
1) Netflix - $3.10
2) CBS - $3.52
3) Amazon - $3.84
4) Fox - $4.19
5) Average - $4.69
6) NBC - $4.95
7) ESPN/ABC - $8.18

Netflix and Amazon have two of the three lowest costs per viewer and the greatest ability to charge more for ads through targeting and measurement. We could already be past the point where traditional networks will always pay more per NFL viewer, even as their economics crumble.

The $16B question: Which will grow faster? The amount the NFL charges streamers or their viewership?

What will the next deal look like?

Quick answer: $16B per year. That's $6B more annually.

The current deal runs through 2033 with a league opt-out after the 2029-30 season. The NFL isn't waiting. It wants new deals done before the 2026 season.

The CBS negotiation is the template. The NFL is seeking a 50-60% increase over CBS's current $2B, pushing the fee above $3B per year. In exchange, the NFL would drop the opt-out clause, locking CBS in through 2033-34.

The order is deliberate: CBS first (to set the price), then Fox, then Amazon, NBC, and Disney. There's also a new 5-game  mini-package for 2026 that YouTube, Netflix, and Fox are expected to bid on.

Why does the NFL have so much leverage?

Quick answer: It's the last mass-market audience in television. Nothing else comes close.

NFL share of top 100 TV telecasts (Nielsen):
1) 2018 - 61%
2) 2019-  73%
3) 2020 - 72%
4) 2021 - 75%
5) 2022 - 82%
6) 2023 - 93%
7) 2024 - 72%
8) 2025 - 83%

The NFL makes up 7% of all linear TV time.

NFL share of linear TV time:
1) 2004 - 2.8%
2) 2014 - 3.6%
3) 2024 - 6.6%

NFL share of linear TV time by network:
1) Fox - 63%
2) CBS - 40%
3) NBC - ≈33%

Quote from Roger Goodell - Commissioner @ the NFL:
“If you look at our history, our history has always been (to) be on the biggest platforms. Network television was after many years. Eventually we moved into cable with ESPN as ESPN continued to grow. … Then satellite. Obviously now streaming.

And the NFL has been a part of every one of those periods where I think our content has actually helped accelerate successfully those platforms. That’s what we want to continue to do, and streaming is clearly that.”

Whether you measure it per viewer hour (Guggenheim: NFL at $1.27 vs. NBA at $3.55) or per unique viewer per game (my analysis above), the answer is the same: the NFL is the best deal in media, which is exactly why it can demand 58% more.

Podcast: The NFL (2026 Update)

What share of content spending goes to the NFL?

This is where the story gets real. Media companies are shifting budgets to sports fast.

Sports share of content spend (Activate):
1) 2023 - 17%
2) 2025 - 26%

Sports share in 2024:
1) Content supply - 13%
2) Time spent - 27%
3) Ad sales - 43%
4) Content spend - 25%

Sports make up just 13% of what's produced but capture 43% of ad revenue. That gap says sports rights are still undervalued compared to entertainment content.

Sports share of content spend by Network (MoffettNathanson):
1) Fox - 63%
2) Disney - 41%
3) NBCUniversal - 27%
4) Average - 26%
5) Paramount + WarnerBros. - 20%
6) Amazon - 19%
7) Netflix - 6%

At $10B per season, the NFL alone accounts for 31% of sports media rights and 8% of all content spend. A $6B increase doesn't sound like much against $130B in total content budgets. But it could come entirely out of the non-sports side. That's a 7% cut to scripted TV, film, and every other sport.

Quote from Ben Gilbert - Co-Host @ Acquired podcast:
“I continue to think that networks are just on this treadmill where they're just going to keep paying more and more and more for NFL rights until is actually non-economic for them to do so, but then they'll be in so deep that it's pretty hard to recover from that.”

Puck's framing is right: the NFL is hoovering up Hollywood's cash. Not because networks want to spend more on football. Because they have no choice, losing the NFL means losing the only programming that still delivers a mass audience. And without a mass audience, the ad revenue collapses.

Bottom line

The NFL isn't renegotiating a TV deal. It's repricing the content economy. And the DOJ is watching. It opened an investigation into the NFL's media deals, questioning whether streaming exclusivity harms consumers. The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 gave the NFL its antitrust exemption. Sixty-five years later, the question is whether that exemption still makes sense when one sport has more leverage than any content provider in history.