A confluence of John Madden, Tony Romo, Amazon and the billions of dollars networks have shelled out for rights to the NFL games have made talking about the games in most cases more profitable than actually playing in them.
A league that can’t stop making personnel moves this offseason with major players changing teams has been mirrored by movement in the broadcast booths — and for huge money.
Joe Buck and Troy Aikman jumped from Fox to ESPN for Monday Night Football, with Buck getting $75 million over five years (the same George Kittle makes for the 49ers) and Aikman a little north of that.
Al Michaels went from NBC to Amazon, which picked up the Thursday night package, for three years in a deal that has been reported at anywhere from $10 million to $15 million per year. He’ll team with Kirk Herbstreit, who gets to retain his college football duties at ESPN at $6 million and probably will make at least that much from Amazon.
NBC already had Mike Tirico in place to replace Michaels and join Cris Collinsworth.
Jim Nantz, who checks in at a reported $10.5 million, remains with Tony Romo, the man who jump-started all the big money with a perfectly-timed free agency in 2018 when he went from $3 million to more than $17 million to remain at CBS rather than jump to ESPN.
There is so much money being thrown around that Rams coach Sean McVay and 49ers GM John Lynch were courted by Amazon and listened to the pitch. Lynch, according to the New York Post, could have tripled his 49ers yearly salary from $5 million to $15 million but opted to remain in the game at a competitive level.
“I can’t believe they’re paying that much for people to talk football,” Lynch said at the NFL scouting combine. “It’s unbelievable.”
Since pretty much everyone agrees fans do not tune in to games based on the broadcast team, how is this possible?
Madden, the late Hall of Fame coach and the gold standard for analysts, changed the game to a point in which networks are always searching for another version of him.
Romo’s raise in 2018 reset the market, and the entry from the deep pockets of Amazon added another suitor to the top broadcasters.
“The market itself at the moment is unlike any market for NFL broadcasters we’ve ever seen,” said Richard Deitsch of The Athletic, a longtime reporter on media. “That’s because of the appearance of a new player with a wheelbarrow full of money.”
With the NFL spread out over so many networks, the earning potential is greater.
“This could only happen in the NFL,” veteran sportscaster Bob Costas told the Washington Post. “The best person working in hockey or basketball or baseball, they don’t even have two comparable options, let alone five. Football reigns over not just sports but over all of American entertainment.”
A little over a year ago, the NFL signed agreements with CBS, NBC, ESPN/ABC, Fox and Amazon for $110 billion combined. Andrew Brandt, a former Green Bay Packers executive and a sports business professor at Villanova, said the impact of that deal is profound.
“It’s mind-blowing, to the point where ratings don’t even matter,” Brandt said on the Rich Eisen podcast. “People talk about ratings, but who cares? Ratings are irrelevant because they’ve made those deals. They’re done. And if the ratings keep going up, the networks will look like they got the good deal rather than the NFL.”
As for the money paid to the announcers, Brandt said, “My point is, if it’s $20 billion at ESPN or Fox or CBS or NBC, what’s $15 million a year to a broadcaster? It’s just part of the program. It’s all in scale.”
Former ESPN executive John Skipper, now the CEO of a new venture called Meadowlark Media, put it this way on the Dan LeBetard podcast:
“The race to hire people is mostly about internal pride, right? We want to present a good game. We want the media to suggest we have a great booth, and the people who can do this very well are very rare.”
This is why the truly big money goes to a select few “in their own area code” according to Deitsch, who estimates announcers and analysts who are not on the No. 1 team make closer to “high six figures and low seven figures” based on when they were hired and how many years they’ve worked.
“The crazy money you’ve been reading about is at the top,” Deitsch said.
How the A teams shake out
— ESPN Monday Night: Joe Buck, Troy Aikman
— NBC: Mike Tirico, Cris Collinsworth
— CBS: Jim Nantz, Tony Romo
— Fox: TBA; Kevin Burkhardt, Greg Olson a possibility. Gus Johnson also a play-by-play candidate.
— Amazon: Al Michaels, Kirk Herbstreit
