Will the Super Bowl Ever Be a Streaming-Exclusive? Could Standalone ESPN Streamer Host the First One?

Super Bowl LVIII is coming up this weekend, and because the Big Game is on CBS this year, it will stream simultaneously on Paramount Global’s on-demand streaming service Paramount+. This season also saw the advent of a streaming-exclusive NFL playoff game, as national audiences were only able to watch the Jan. 13 Wild Card game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins on NBCUniversal’s streamer Peacock. The ratings for that game were more than good enough to satisfy the league, and its success raises the question of whether a streaming-only Super Bowl is now inevitable.

• Rights to a streaming-exclusive Super Bowl would cost billions of dollars, likely limiting the number of potential hosts.
• ESPN hosts a Super Bowl in 2031, by which time it is likely to have launched a new streaming service that could host an exclusive Super Bowl.
• There’s a good chance no outlet will be allowed to carry a streaming-exclusive Super Bowl until at least 2034.

Is a Streaming-Exclusive Super Bowl Even Possible?

Many market analysts believe that the streaming-exclusive Wild Card game on Peacock during the 2023 NFL postseason points directly to a future Super Bowl that fans will only be able to watch on a streaming service. The league already splits its games among more than 10 linear channels and streaming platforms, and if an outlet threw enough money at the league, it could acquiesce to making the Super Bowl a streaming-exclusive event.

“I don’t think that’s beyond the realm of possibility, because the NFL is showing a willingness to split up the broadcast rights across so many different distributors, and it opens up a bit of a Pandora’s box on all the ways you can actually deliver and price for the biggest sports event in the U.S.,” Jacqueline Corbelli, CEO of BrightLine told Market Watch about the potential of a streaming-exclusive Super Bowl.

It may be that the NFL’s current broadcast agreement, which runs through 2033 and covers its TV deals with CBS, Fox, ABC/ESPN, and NBC, as well as all Super Bowls until then. It clearly lays out which channels get the rights to air a Super Bowl and when, and it could stipulate that each edition of the Big Game has to be shown on traditional TV. But if there is some wiggle room in how each broadcaster offers the Super Bowl, it’s worth speculating as to which streaming services could be the host of the first streaming-exclusive broadcast of the game.

Which Streaming Service Could Host an Exclusive Super Bowl?

From a technical standpoint, all of the streaming services that offer NFL games are capable enough of carrying the Super Bowl. Paramount+ and Peacock have already hosted Super Bowl simulcasts, and Prime Video offers “Thursday Night Football” games to a national audience every week during the NFL regular season. ESPN+ has already carried exclusive NFL regular season games, though these have been restricted to internationally played games thus far; ESPN+ also streams multiple broadcasts of “Monday Night Football” each season. So each platform clearly has the capability to broadcast a Big Game, they would just need to make sure that they had enough server support in order to make sure that the service didn’t crash from the millions of additional viewers.

The question is what current rights holder would be the most incentivized to move a Super Bowl game from its traditional linear home to a streaming service? Last month, Peacock aired the league’s first streaming-exclusive playoff game, and even went a step further and made the fourth quarter commercial-free. The loss of advertising revenue was worth it to Comcast and NBCUniversal as the companies are looking to position Peacock as a streaming sports leader ahead of this summer’s Olympic Games. The NBCU service will air every single event from Paris throughout the two weeks of competition.

While financial fortunes could change between now and whenever the hypothetical streaming-exclusive Super Bowl took place, currently, Paramount Global feels like an unlikely candidate to make such a major move. CBS’s parent company is struggling to determine how it will come up with $2 billion for next season’s NFL broadcast rights, meaning that if the network — which is currently up for sale — retains its NFL rights moving forward, it might not be able to shoulder the loss in advertising revenue that would invariably accompany taking the game off of a traditional broadcast network.

While Amazon could almost certainly afford everything that goes with streaming a Super Bowl, the tech giant does not hold any NFL playoff rights, so it would not be in the cards for the next decades, barring any seismic shifts in broadcast deals. Fox could be an interesting option, but the media company does not currently have a streaming service to support such a move. While the company does own Tubi and Fox Nation, neither would make much sense to be the streaming exclusive home of a future Super Bowl. However, last spring, CEO Lachlan Murdoch said that Fox was ready to move forward with a direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming service whenever the time was right. He said that the company’s linear channels were too profitable to currently consider such a move, but during the next 10 years of the current media rights deal, perhaps things will change. With Super Bowl broadcasts is 2025, 2029, and 2033, a streaming-exclusive Big Game would be a great way to draw attention to a new streamer.

That would be the idea behind the option that The Streamable sees as the best bet. In our expert opinion, having covered the streaming industry since 2017, the best candidate for a streaming-exclusive Super Bowl seems to be ESPN. The worldwide leader in sports intends to launch a streaming version of its networks by 2025 that won’t require a cable subscription, and the service would likely cost between $30 and $50 per month. Disney is due to host Super Bowls on its channels in 2027 and 2031, and making the new ESPN streaming platform the exclusive home of the Super Bowl would likely anger many fans around the country, but it would also bring unparalleled attention to the service.

What channels are scheduled to air future Super Bowls?

Is the NFL Actually Open to Airing a Super Bowl Only on Streaming?

The NFL would likely be receptive to overtures from Disney in this regard, as the ESPN brand is a powerful draw for sports fans. That could mitigate the risk of customers who will refuse to watch a streaming-exclusive Super Bowl on principle, and help convince the NFL that moving the game to streaming exclusively will still be a sound financial move, especially if the new ESPN streaming service has an impressive subscriber count by that time.

“The NFL is a revenue-focused business model. It’s all about the money with the NFL,” Jim Willcox, senior electronics editor at Consumer Reports, told MarketWatch. “They would have to balance the loss of revenue that they would get from a broadcast partner paying for those rights compared to a streaming service paying for those rights.”

It seems like a reasonable bet that the NFL will offer a streaming-exclusive Super Bowl at some point in the future. Whether that can happen until the expiration of its current broadcast deals is doubtful, but if it is possible, The Streamable sees ESPN’s new streaming platform as the best possible partner for the league.

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