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The only thing that will hit harder than the tackles on NFL Sundays this season is the fans’ wallets.
Michael J. Wolf, the co-founder and CEO of Activate Consulting, a leading strategy and consulting firm, said that the NFL has an affordability issue when it comes to fans being able to watch games.
“It is a big affordability issue, and it’s just coming down to the value of teams versus the value of the viewer. And so, essentially, what we’re taking is we’re taking NFL, which is really one the few things that drives people to watch sports and across all these services, and we’re getting people to pay for it,” Wolf said during a recent appearance on FOX Business’ “Mornings with Maria.”
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Activate estimated that the total cost for fans to watch NFL games this season will be $1,400 a year. While basic cable will give fans a good amount of football, they won’t be able to watch all games without subscribing to the requisite streaming services.
“There’s a big affordability issue in you have to have a large number of services to watch everything. You would get roughly 15 hours of NFL a week if you just have basic cable and an antenna. But to get the full package, you’re going to need basic cable plus the stations plus the NFL Sunday ticket,” Wolf said.
Wolf cited the licensing fees for all sports leagues, not just the NFL, which force leagues to maximize their value.
“Well, the NFL — each of the leagues are doing everything they can to maximize the value. So, the US sports leagues, the license fees are roughly 33 billion a year and a third of that is from the NFL. The forecasts are that we’re going to go from 11 billion a year to almost 20 billion from the NFL,” Wolf said.
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In addition to the exorbitant costs for NFL fans to watch all the games, Wolf said another point of consternation is how complex it is to find them. Fans don’t know which streaming service or channel a game is on, despite paying for the services needed to watch it.
For example, in Week 1, the NFL will broadcast games on five different networks and platforms. The league will open with a nationally televised game Wednesday night, a Super Bowl rematch between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks on NBC.
The second game of the season is a massive NFC West rivalry game between the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams Thursday. The game will be played in Australia and broadcast on Netflix.
Sunday afternoon, all the games will be broadcast on FOX and CBS, with “Sunday Night Football” on NBC. The final prime-time game of Week 1, “Monday Night Football” between the Kansas City Chiefs and Denver Broncos, will be broadcast on ESPN.
Week 2 will begin with the Detroit Lions and the Buffalo Bills playing on Thursday on the opening night of the Bills’ brand-new stadium. The game will be broadcast on Amazon Prime Video.
Not exactly easy or cheap, for fans to watch.
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