A legal battle is currently unfolding in a Los Angeles federal court over the NFL’s “Sunday Ticket” service.
Subscribers have brought an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL, claiming that the league has set exorbitantly high prices for the service and has limited its availability exclusively to DirecTV, thereby restricting viewer access.
During his testimony on Monday, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell defended “Sunday Ticket” as a premium offering, drawing on his own benchmarks for NFL broadcasts to justify the approach.
In a surprising turn, Goodell openly criticized the production quality of games previously broadcast on NFL Network. He cited this as the reason for transitioning Thursday night games to other networks. From 2006 to 2013, the NFL Network was the home for these games, after which the broadcasting rights were shared by CBS and NBC for three seasons, and then Fox took over for the next five years.
Goodell’s candid assessment revealed his dissatisfaction with the NFL Network’s production standards, which he felt fell short of those set by networks like Fox and CBS. “I had my own opinion that our production was below standards that the networks had set,” Goodell stated, according to the Associated Press. “We had not met that standard.”
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This revelation is particularly striking given that the NFL owns the NFL Network, making Goodell’s critique a direct reflection on the league’s own broadcasting capabilities. It explains why the NFL might choose not to allocate a package of games to its network, suggesting that the move to shift Thursday Night Football (TNF) to other broadcasters was driven by a desire for higher production quality.
This strategic shift proved to be financially advantageous, as it allowed the NFL to broker deals with major networks, and most recently, an 11-year agreement with Amazon Prime, valued at $1 billion annually.
While Goodell’s remarks might seem critical of the NFL Network’s earlier efforts, they inadvertently underscore the calculated decisions behind the NFL’s broadcasting strategies, leading to lucrative partnerships and expanded distribution of its game telecasts.