Can ‘Too Much’ Football Exist? The TV Industry Is About To Find Out
Football has long been the highlight of traditional TV packages, and that’s only become more apparent over time. As a result, the sport has grown its influence significantly in the last couple decades — and especially in the last few years as streaming puts more pressure on MVPDs and networks.
That pressure has led to both the NFL and college football getting larger and larger.
For the NFL, just a few years after expanding to a 17-game regular season, talk of 18 games feels like a certainty when the next TV deal rolls around. The league owns its own streaming service (NFL+), while also expanding its footprint into more streaming games. Its stranglehold on TV — the NFL accounted for 93 of the top 100 programs of 2023 — even gives it the ability to publicly go on the attack against some of its own media partners’ proposed sports venture.
College football, meanwhile, has followed the money to more disruptive conference realignment and a growing playoff structure that allows its top programs to cash in on a rapidly nationalized sport.
Of course, this all sets the stage for Tuesday’s announcement, in which the NFL reversed course on previous stances, and will play games on Christmas Day (a Wednesday) this year. The result creates the following end-of-year football bonanza:
Starting Christmas Day, we’ll have this weeklong football stretch:
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) March 26, 2024
December 25th: NFL game
December 26th: NFL game
December 28th: NFL games
December 29th: NFL games
December 30th: NFL game
December 31st: College Football Quarterfinals
January 1st: College Football Quarterfinals https://t.co/FtQTSGrEi2
So the NFL will potentially have games on Sunday, December 22 and Monday, December 23, before a one-day break, two more days of games, another break, and then another two days of games. While the NFL once steered around Christmas to an extent, its still-growing power relative to all other TV programming (with 15% more ad impressions YoY according to iSpot) allows the league to basically take over the week before and after Christmas this year, with wall-to-wall games.
And that’s BEFORE we get to the final week of the regular season, plus the usual playoff takeover in January.
Not enough football yet? College football’s first round playoff matchups start the weekend of Dec. 20, with quarterfinals around the New Year, semifinals the second week of January and finals way out on January 20 (smack in the middle of the NFL Playoffs).
On paper, this is a win for fans, advertisers and networks. Football is the most bankable programming on TV, and even ratings for lesser bowl games over the years have been impressive — and that’s still nothing compared to showcase playoff games, primetime holiday matchups and other “special” presentations. If audiences are tuning in for football, then they’ll theoretically tune in for even more football.
But… the expansion to football nearly every day does start to gnaw at what could be a long-term issue for the industry.
Football’s exalted place among U.S. TV viewers was built in part on scarcity. NFL games were only on Sundays. College was only on Saturdays. So unlike MLB, NBA and NHL games, these were one-day “events,” and fans have long built a culture around tuning into that single occurrence.
We may be a long way past the time when either football property was limited to a single day of the week, yet game days retain a premium quality to them for viewers and networks (and as a result, brands) alike. But if every day is a premium event, technically no day is a premium event. And so much tentpole programming all at once creates quandaries for advertisers around what to prioritize spend around.
For audiences, many of whom have other professional and personal responsibilities, it forces them to start choosing between these events due to the sheer volume of games — and the limited hours available to watch.
In the immediate-term, that’s not the NFL’s problem, or college football’s, either. They’re getting paid by networks no matter what.
But these TV deals have end-dates. And if the glut of games starts impacting per-event tune-in, perhaps the piles of money thrown at college and pro football for media rights get a second look. Until then, the industry seems happy to test just how much of a good thing everyone will buy into.
