NBC Says Unlikely to Offer Enough to Get NFL Rights
BOSTON (Reuters) – NBC probably will not offer enough to secure broadcast rights to National Football League games even though it would be interested in carrying the widely watched games, executives at corporate parent General Electric Co. said on Tuesday.
NBC gave up the right to televise NFL games in 1998, saying it had become too costly. NBC Universal Chief Executive Bob Wright said cost considerations would again be the main factor in a decision for the network.
“We would have an interest in something like football, but it’s unlikely that on a broadcast side we would be able to put up enough money to interest football to do something with us,” said Wright at an analyst meeting in Orlando, Florida.
NBC also stopped televising National Basketball Association games three years ago and the network’s sports line-up now focuses on the summer and winter Olympics, auto racing and golf.
“We’d love to have football, (but) we will not make a stupid deal,” NBC Universal Television Group President Jeff Zucker said in January.
Last November, rival networks CBS, a division of Viacom Inc. and Fox, owned by News Corp., paid a combined $8 billion to extend their broadcast agreements with the NFL until 2011.
Walt Disney Co. units ABC and ESPN are currently in negotiations with the league for the rights to broadcast Sunday and Monday night games.
Complicating those negotiations are what to do with the NFL’s proposal to broadcast eight games on Thursday or Saturday nights later in the season.
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