Sunday Night Football: A Case Study

When negotiating this new deal with the NFL for Sunday Night Football (SNF), it is important to consider three things: the cost vs. the benefits of having SNF, alternative sports/programming that would provide similar or greater benefits that SNF currently provides, and the rise of streaming and cord-cutting. Obviously, NBC Sports would like to keep SNF. Currently, NBC pays $950 million per year for its SNF package (Sandomir, 2016). In the past, it has been a lucrative advertising program for NBC. However, with viewership consistently declining advertisers are not willing to pay top dollar for commercial placements anymore. In the past, NBC has charged about $665,375 per 30-second spot in the SNF lineup (Crupi, 2015). The commercials make up for the large cost to NBC for purchasing SNF, but that revenue is threatened by the decline of viewership, which is a major consideration for …show more content…
The NBA has seen an increase in viewership over the past year. ESPN saw a 24% increase in viewership of its NBA package in 2017 (Putterman, 2017). Data shows that the NBA seems to be doing well even with the large amounts of viewers fleeing from television. This increase and stability should be a consideration for NBC when deciding whether or not the SNF package would be the best purchase for the company. The decline of viewership is linked to many different causes, but one of the most prevalent is cord cutting. According to Derek Thompson from The Atlantic (2017), “five years ago there were hardly a million ‘cord-cutter’ households. Today, there are an estimated 7 million.” The rise of streaming has been the downfall of cable. This doesn’t mean that viewers aren’t watching football; rather, they are just not watching it on TVs. The change of device requires NBC to consider the new options and changes to terms of agreement within the SNF package to attract the largest viewership and