Saturday, December 29, 2007

Football Broadcasting

So I thought I was going to be one of the few people to be able to watch the New England Patriots play the New York Giants tonight because FiOS carries the NFL Network. But a couple of days ago apparently the NFL relented and allowed both CBS and NBC to broadcast the game to a large audience. So it's game time and I see not only do NFLN, CBS, and NBC have it but ABC as well. The same thing on 4 different networks. Presidential election debates don't get this coverage.

So the Pats are undefeated at 15-0 and while the Giants have a 10-5 record, they really aren't that good. But in 1998 the Giants defeated the 14-0 Buffalo Bills with an even worse team. It wouldn't surprise me if they won, but I don't really expect it.

I think I'll watch on...ABC.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yes, I found this 3-network broadcast interesting. I was wondering about that.... the total "pie" of expected viewers must have been so big that even divvying it up 3 ways was worthwhile.

And what of ABC (?) who had the original rights to broadcast the game? The NFL's reselling of it must have miffed them. Maybe they didn't purchase exclusive rights?

I would be curious to know more about the economics of this. At what price did ABC obtain the rights to broadcast? At what price did the other networks obtain the rights? What was the viewership? And how does that viewership translate into advertising dollars?

And what exactly is the NFL selling....if not exclusive rights to broadcast? Is the business model shifting to NFL-iTunes ... where the networks can buy only the games they want ... from a more album-based model where the networks had to buy a whole season or package?

And what is it about the undefeated season that people find so interesting? Even the Super Bowl isn't on 3 networks.