The NFL discusses live game rights with new media partners

The NFL plans to hold talks with non-traditional media companies to sell them live streaming rights, NFL President Hans Schroeder told CNBC Sport on Friday.

“We have other people who are both partners in a smaller sense — maybe not a full package — or people who are still in the media landscape somewhere who would like to be partners in live games in the NFL,” Schroder said in an interview from Raw Radio ahead of Super Bowl LX in San Francisco.

“We will have those conversations,” he added. “We want to understand all of our options and how to think about the best model for us, for our fans, for our teams moving forward. So, to your question, you know, we’ll listen and we’ll probably have a lot of different people who want to have a conversation with us. That’s very fortunate. We say that with all humility, and we’ll make sure that we understand those conversations.”

Schroeder did not provide details about companies that might be interested in purchasing a live game. The NFL sold a one-week game to YouTube last season for about $100 million, a one-time strategy that could be replicated with other digital platforms. The widespread societal shift to live streaming has made digital broadcasting a similar competitor to broadcast television, which has long been the league’s preferred distribution strategy due to its reach.

“Now you see these big digital platforms that can reach audiences at the broadcast level,” Schroeder said. “This creates more options.”

The NFL and its traditional media partners – Disney, Paramount Global, ComcastNBCUniversal and Amazon Discussion of new media rights will likely begin later this year, four years before the opt-out clause in the current agreement, according to people familiar with the matter. Schroder echoed NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s comments to CNBC in September that the league would be open to having those conversations.

“I’m sure they do the work on their part when the time is right, because they either want to hit the ‘participate’ button or the commissioner says, ‘Hey, let’s go do this,'” Schroeder said.

The NFL is expanding the number of international matches to nine next season – a record. He said the league may sell a new package of some of these games to a media partner as soon as next year.

“That will be one of the things we look at,” Schroeder said.