CBS CBS Corp

By Joe Flint 

The National Football League is taking a divide-and-conquer approach to its television rights.

After two years of CBS having exclusive broadcast rights to Thursday night football, the league is splitting the package with CBS and NBC for the next two seasons, a move that will increase annual rights fees to $450 million from $300 million per season. Each network is paying $225 million, people familiar with the matter said.

Under the terms of the deal, CBS and NBC will each carry five Thursday games. As has been the case for the past two years, the league-owned cable channel NFL Network will simulcast the broadcast portion of the package. The NFL Network will also carry eight games exclusively that will be produced by CBS and NBC.

Brian Rolapp, the NFL's executive vice president of media, said it made sense to split up the Thursday package because, "we want as many voices talking about Thursday Night Football as possible."

The network, which also carries Sunday Night Football, was aggressive in pursuing the Thursday games. The high ratings NBC's Sunday coverage generates likely played a part in the NFL's decision to cut the network in on Thursday. "My sense is this is the NFL saying NBC has done great job on Sunday and maybe the can bring some of that magic to Thursday," said NBCUniversal Chief Executive Steve Burke. Thursday is considered one of the most important advertising nights of the week, since movie studios and car companies spend heavily in advance of the weekend. NBC is a unit of Comcast Corp.

While CBS is losing three games, the lower rights fees will be welcome relief as it had been losing money on the package.

"It is a more economically feasible package than anything else would have been," said CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves. "I really believe everybody won."

Guggenheim Securities analyst Michael Morris estimated that CBS lost $100 million in 2015 on its Thursday NFL deal. Mr. Moonves said the losses weren't that high. "I won't lie and say it was profitable, but it was more than made up for in the other benefits" such as being able to program fewer TV reruns, because of the amount of prime-time hours devoted to the games, he said.

The NFL is also planning on selling streaming rights for the Thursday package, although that won't affect the rights CBS and NBC have to offer the games online to pay-TV subscribers. Mr. Rolapp said he expects the digital rights deals to be completed within weeks.

Neither Mr. Moonves nor NBC Sports Group Chairman Mark Lazarus believed the Thursday streaming would cut into their audiences.

"We don't think it makes a big dent in what we're doing," Mr. Moonves said. Both CBS and NBC will continue to stream games to viewers with pay-TV subscriptions.

CBS will carry its games at the start of the season. The network will have two Thursday games in September and then the NFL Network will carry two games exclusively. CBS will then run the next three games. The NFL Network will then carry its other six exclusive games.

NBC will carry its part of the schedule toward the end of the season and because it has Thanksgiving night football as well it will run six straight weeks of Thursday games.

"Hopefully all these games will have playoff implications," Mr. Lazarus said. Al Michaels, considered the dean of NFL broadcasters, will call NBC's Thursday games as well as continue his Sunday night duties.

Write to Joe Flint at joe.flint@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 01, 2016 18:07 ET (23:07 GMT)

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