Will the Super Bowl ever be behind a streaming paywall? This is what it takes

The year is 2045. Fourth week of February. After a grueling 21-week regular season and five play-off rounds, the Super Bowl match is scheduled: Buffalo Bills versus London Jaguars. The NFL expects 130 million viewers to stream the game on Netflix, which serves as the exclusive home of the Super Bowl following a multibillion-dollar deal the company struck with the league in 2040.

Those who don't subscribe to the streaming service can pay $149 for a one-month trial, which includes access to the game via one of Netflix's 10 Megacast Super Bowl feeds. A popular Megacast option is the Legends Room, where retired players Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and CJ Stroud interact live with viewers as they watch the game. Adam Amin, Greg Olsen and Laura Rutledge will call the game on Netflix's flagship NFL channel.

Sounds far-fetched? Maybe it would have been 10 years ago. While a thought exercise about the NFL Turning the Super Bowl into a pay-per-view event is nothing newWhat is new is the era we live in. Last month's first-ever exclusive, live-streamed NFL playoff game on Peacock felt like a seismic moment.

Peacock paid $110 million to broadcast the Kansas City Chiefs' 26-7 victory over the Miami Dolphins in the AFC wild-card round, an effort to replenish its 30 million subscriber base. Antenna, a research firm that tracks streaming data, estimated that Peacock had 2.8 million sign-ups over a three-day period surrounding the wild-card game, which averaged 23 million viewers. It was Antenna's biggest subscriber acquisition moment ever recorded.

Is the Super Bowl behind a paywall inevitable in the next forty years?

“Given the cord-cut rate above 7 percent, or five million homes gone each year, there's a very good chance the Super Bowl will be on a streaming platform in 'our' lifetime,” said Michael Nathanson, the co-manager of the Super Bowl. founder and senior managing director of research firm MoffettNathanson, which provides media, communications and technology trends to institutional investors.

NFL officials have repeatedly stated that the league is committed to television broadcasts and the wide distribution of games. Hans Schroeder, the NFL's executive vice president of media distribution, told reporters last month, among other things The Athletics, that “you can't reach 190 million people over the course of the year without very wide distribution of your content, and that's always been a foundation for us. … All of our games are televised, at least in their market, and probably 90 percent of our games are broadcast as their core platform. It remains very important to us.”

Longtime CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus, who is retiring later this year, noted that such a conversation can't happen until after this current set of NFL media rights expires. The league's media rights deals with CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN and Amazon are worth approximately $110 billion and run through the 2033 season.

“There is no immediate concern,” McManus said. “(NFL Commissioner) Roger Goodell has said very clearly that broad distribution is part of why the NFL is so successful. Yes, the NFL has expanded to include some games on Peacock, including a playoff game. … But if 56 million people watch the AFC Championship Game (on CBS), that's a major success story. I can't speak for Netflix, Amazon or Apple about whether it makes business sense to pay hundreds of millions for a playoff game, but I do know that linear television is extremely important to the success of the NFL.”

Along with McManus, David Levy, the former president of Turner Sports and now the co-CEO of Horizon Sports & Experiences, a sports marketing agency and consulting firm, believes the Super Bowl will continue to appear on free television for years to come. the next few years.

“Broadcast and free-to-air are still the biggest reach,” Levy said. “You're always building a new generation of fans, and they want the place to have the biggest reach. In thirty years? “I can't answer that because I don't know who would be the commissioner of the NFL and who would own these teams.”

Levy was very positive about the NFL product appearing on streaming services. But he noted an important point: Any streaming service that exclusively airs the Super Bowl would need its own production capabilities and enough proof of concept with production elements where the NFL would feel confident putting its most important asset in their hands. That's not something that Netflix or Apple currently have.

“Everyone expects to turn on the network television and see a Super Bowl,” said Tracy Wolfson, the NFL sideline reporter calling Sunday's game for CBS. “I think you're alienating those who can't watch it. I wouldn't be surprised if we see more playoff games there, but I think when it comes to the Super Bowl, it's about how much attention there is and making sure it's available for everyone to watch.

William Mao, senior vice president of global media rights at Octagon, a sports and entertainment agency, believes it's unlikely we'll see a Super Bowl exclusively on a streaming service in the U.S. in the next 20 to 25 years if it's available for free download is. The penetration of terrestrial television (remains greater than that of video-on-demand with a single subscription). He said his answer would only change if (or if) a paywall streamer lets the subscriber reach a capacity close to today's free-to-air penetration.

“As long as the Super Bowl remains the most-watched live TV broadcast by a wide margin, it will continue to be available for free in some form,” Mao predicted. “The aggregation of more than 100 million viewers onto a single broadcast remains too much of an advertising draw to rely solely on a paywall, and all signs point to continued increases in Super Bowl ratings and ad rates through current distribution.

“Could there come a point in the future where something else takes the Super Bowl off the top shelf? Certainly, never say never. But right now, the difference between the first and second most watched broadcasts in America is more than 60 million viewers. So why would the NFL disrupt its own dominant and extremely lucrative position?”

Mao pointed out that the Super Bowl is unique because it attracts many casual viewers. People watch the game for a variety of reasons, including the commercials and musical acts during halftime. He wondered whether top artists would continue to perform the halftime show at a low cost if it aired behind a paywall and was not guaranteed to reach the same audience. There would also be some interested people in Congress if the NFL were to go this route.

This discussion feels much more relevant in 2024 because of the Peacock game. We don't know how many new subscribers will stick with Peacock long-term, and the game wasn't 100 percent exclusively streamed because it appeared on free television in Kansas City and Miami. But the NFL put one of its premium inventory games behind a paywall.

“The Peacock number was solid and the broadcast provided an informative reference point for future NFL games to be distributed in the same manner,” Mao said. “For example, will a 40 percent reduction in advertising burden become the norm for streamer games? But there are still a lot of steps between moving one of the many wild card games to a streamer and moving the biggest game of the year. In my opinion, the Super Bowl should be one of the last things to go exclusively behind a paywall in the NFL's portfolio.”

It's not easy to come up with a prize for a Super Bowl behind a paywall. Is there a ceiling on what is by far the most popular community TV experience for Americans every year?as well as almost nine million Canadians)? Returning to the hypothetical premise of this article, let's say Netflix got 30 million new sign-ups for a Super Bowl experience for $149. That's almost $4.5 billion. This does not include advertising revenue. There would certainly be a lot of subscriber churn after the Super Bowl, but there would also be people who stick with the product and then pay for the annual subscription.

“I don't think the question is about the price for one game,” Mao said. “If the Super Bowl had an exclusive streaming future, it would be more likely primarily as part of a set of broader rights.”

When I posed the contest to Nathanson, he said it was difficult to figure out a definitive figure.

“That's a good question,” Nathanson said. “How many people paid $6 for a wildcard game pay-per-view on Peacock? Obviously it would be multiples (more than that).”

It's unlikely the NFL will go down this path in the short to medium term. But ask yourself if in 2014 you thought you would ever have to pay to watch an NFL playoff game.

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(Photo of a promotional display for Super Bowl LVIII on CBS outside the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)