A ’26 NFL Off-Field Season Preview

0:00Mike Florio:Imagine you're finally cleaning out your gutters when the smoke alarm starts blaring from inside. Smoke billows out of the window. ADT's affordable DIY systems are built for those moments where everything can change in a second. They're easy to set up, customizable, and help keep your home safe with 24-7 monitoring. No one wants to feel unsafe at home, and with ADT, you won't. ADT prioritizes your peace of mind with the most company-operated monitoring centers in the industry. With the ADT Plus app, you stay in control from virtually anywhere. Don't wait to prepare for an emergency. When every second counts, count on ADT.

0:33Visit ADT.com or call 1-800-ADT-ASAP. The right window treatments change everything. Your sleep, your privacy, the way every room looks and feels. At Blinds.com, we've spent 30 years making it surprisingly simple to get exactly what your home needs. We've covered over 25 million windows and have 50 ,000 five-star reviews to prove we deliver. Whether you DIY it or want a pro to handle everything from measure to install, we have you covered. Real design professionals, free samples, zero pressure. Right now, get up to 45 % off site-wide, plus get a free professional measure at blinds.com. Rules and restrictions apply.

1:12Mike Florio:Congratulations, you made the varsity podcast. My name is John Arandon. I'm a sports correspondent and host of this pod. And today, I'm happy to have Mike Florio return to the pod for a lot of sports business talk. Florio joins us from his pro football talk set in Canton, Ohio, hours before the Hall of Fame game. Perfect timing for an NFL preview show. We're going to touch on a bunch of topics from media rights to 18th Games to Tony Romo. I love having Florio on the pod. This is going to be a good one. But before I get to Mike Florio, today is Sunday, August 9th, and here's what I'm watching. I want to talk about the Preakness Stakes, the second leg of the Triple Crown.

1:52Mike Florio:Now, a bunch of you may have missed the news last week that the Preakness signed a new media deal that keeps a horse race on NBC for another six years. Now, normally, I wouldn't devote this segment to such a small deal. I'm told NBC is paying close to$5 million per year for the rights, which is just about double what it had been paying. That's a great deal for Doug Perlman, who negotiated on behalf of the race. But I've been spending the past several years describing a tough marketplace for sports media rights. One where the biggest properties will be fine. That's the NFL, the SEC, the Big Ten, the NBA.

2:26Mike Florio:And the smaller to mid-sized properties, like the Preakness, would be left with the scraps. Now look, I love the Preakness. It's a people's race. But nobody would ever describe it as a Tier 1 property. So how did the Preakness manage to double its rights fees in this market? Well, in this case, there were a couple of factors that caused this jump. One, there was competition for those rights. NBC holds the rights to the Kentucky Derby. Fox has them for the Belmont. They both wanted to control this second leg of the Triple Crown. Plus, streamers were lurking. Netflix likes to eventize stuff, right?

3:05Mike Florio:So why wouldn't it want to buy the rights to one of the three Triple Crown races and market around that? It's like buying a house. When you have multiple bidders, they bid each other up, and that's what happened here. But it's about more than that. The Preakness didn't convince media companies that it was all of a sudden a tier one media property, but it did position itself as a strategic property. For NBC and Fox, it was strategic to enhance the investment they both already made in the Triple Crown. And for the streamers, it was a strategic way to try and get into a new sports, to eventize. And now that's my long-winded way of saying that these results, doubling of the rights fees, don't signal a changing market, but it does offer a blueprint for how anyone not named the NFL can still work out good deals.

3:57Mike Florio:As for now, let's get to Mike Florio. Mike Florio, live from Canton, Ohio. Thank you very much for joining the pod, the beginning of the NFL season. And I just, the thing about the Hall of Fame game as a kid, I just remember turning on the TV and I'm like, oh my goodness, they're playing football again. The actual football players, back then it was the starters would play for a quarter or two. But it always marks the official beginning of, or the unofficial beginning, I suppose. But there are so many storylines and there's so many things I want to talk to you about. And you can read on the side of the panel there.

4:37Mike Florio:But I just want to give you like an open-ended question. In terms of off-field topics, what do you prioritize? What are sort of the biggest things that you're following in the league right now off the field? Well, when it comes to off-the-field issues, it seems like there's always a new one that pops up every week that becomes the focal point, and then everything else gets nudged to the back burner until the next development that pulls it to the front burner. I'll give you a prime example. The looming decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in the Sunday ticket class action, depending upon how that goes, that could be seismic.

5:17so we know that at some point the ruling is going to come i'm not paying attention to it other than to wait for the white smoke to come from the chimney at the ninth circuit's courthouse but that's going to entail a lot of reading understanding digesting analyzing and understanding the ramifications depending upon which way it goes so i think a lot of these off-field issues are just kind of there until they're not. And meanwhile, there's another new one that drops out of the sky every so often.

5:50Mike Florio:And then when they hit, I mean, you're so right. We've talked about this before when you've been on this Sunday ticket suit as it goes through, if it continues to go through as we're looking at it, can take all of the media rights deals and And frankly, the sponsorship deals and everything else on top of it and just throw it into utter chaos to where potentially in a worse. Is it a worst case scenario? In the worst case scenario, the Cowboys can negotiate with Netflix or CBS or Fox or whoever for all of their home games, just like and or potentially the NFC Central could say, OK, we're going to pool our rights and sort of go as the NFC Central.

6:37Mike Florio:And that's a worst case scenario. There's almost certainly going to be something that plays out before that so that that doesn't happen. But it is. It's a the way the NFL has done business since the 1960s could be tossed aside on this one. And even if we never get to the point where it's the full chaos of the Cowboys selling their rights for an ungodly amount and the Jaguars scrambling to find a public access channel. and I'm kidding, I don't want to get Jaguars fans any more upset with me than they'd already be inclined to be, but there would be a huge gap between the most popular and the least popular teams nationally.

7:15Even without that, the ruling in the Sunday ticket case could just throw the entire Sunday ticket model into chaos. There could be eventually a court order preventing the NFL from operating Sunday ticket the way it does. There could be a situation where, and this is one of the models that came out during the trial, the idea, and the NFL has looked into this, of having every game on the collection of cable channels that we all already pay for on a monthly basis. So you can flip around from ESPN to ESPN2 to FS1 to NBCSN, and there's going to be a one o 'clock Eastern game on there in lieu of having to plunk down$400 plus to have the ability to watch any of them.

8:00They'll all be available through the channels you already pay for. That's one potential outcome to all of this. And the NFL possibly having to come up with$14 billion, which is not exactly an easy amount of money for a multi-billion dollar corporation to come up with in cash. There's a lot at stake, and that's just a prime example of something that is there. We know it's there. Nothing's happening, but eventually something's going to happen, and it could be something big.

8:25Mike Florio:By the way, as usual, you made such a good point there. I live in D.C. as I've met with a bunch of Capitol Hill staffers, and they don't care about the NFL selling packages to Fox or really even to Netflix. What they care about is that Sunday ticket. If they're from, let's say, Georgia, they want to be able to see every single Falcons game without having to pay$200,$300, whatever the cost is for a Sunday ticket this year. They want an affordable package to where they can see their own team's games, which in the year of 2026 should be made available in some form or another. But that does take the whole Sunday ticket business model and throw it on its head pretty much.

9:13and john that's one area where the committee that had the hearing back in june essentially hoisted the nfl on its own petard by pointing out yes you'll say that the sunday ticket package is there for the zealous fan that wants to watch every game but the way they used to market it and their own internal data shows this is a product for the people who care about one team They don't live in the market where that team plays. The only way they can see all of the Sunday afternoon games of that team is to have Sunday ticket. I know when I was a consumer only, that's why I got Sunday ticket. I didn't live in Vikings country.

9:54I wanted to watch Vikings game. I didn't care about the other games. I mean, yeah, I had access to them, so I'd watch some of them. But the whole purpose of buying it is you can see every game of that one team wherever you may live. and they make it ridiculously expensive, as I'm sure you've discussed at length, and I know we've discussed this in the past. They make it ridiculously expensive as a disincentive so that people will just say, I can't afford that. I'll just watch the free games that are on the local Fox and CBS affiliates, even if it's not the team that I would prefer to watch play.

10:28Mike Florio:I'm sure this isn't new news, but it's new news to me, Mike. You know, the king of West Virginia was a Vikings fan, not the Steelers, not the Ravens, you have so many more closer teams to you. I'm a little bit shocked by that. John, I grew up in the shadows of Pittsburgh, and I came of age in the early 70s. I first discovered the NFL in the Immaculate Reception game between the Steelers and the Raiders. All signs should have pointed to me being a Steelers fan, but as you may have noticed over the years, I do have a little bit of a contrarian streak. So when everyone told me, oh, you need to be a Steelers fan, And I said, hey, there's a bunch of other teams.

11:07I'll pick my own damn team. Thank you very much. And that's what I did. That's great.

11:13Mike Florio:Your answer is I can't argue with it. That is the number one business item that's coming is the Sunday ticket case going through the courts. I am totally fascinated by this Tony Romo situation. Tony Romo, of course, was arrested near Milwaukee, charged with operating while intoxicated. How long is that video? 25 minutes? A long video of him trying to figure out how to walk a straight line and not understanding directions. He apparently had an open container. He's since been put on leave, indefinite leave, by CBS Sports. He makes$18 million a year. CBS is being taken over by Paramount and looking to cut costs.

12:05Mike Florio:They have somebody in the wings in J.J. Watt, who is prepared to come in. They also have Greg Olson over at Fox. His contract is up after this year, a potential number one analyst. troy aikman at espn his contract is up after this year potentially a number one analyst kirk herbstreet the thursday night football analyst over at uh at amazon his contract is up after after this season as well so the uh and then you have tony romo who is still a popular sort of like an everyman type figure uh that that that resonates sort of in the heartland And how CBS is able to navigate this and what comes of this is something that I'm going to be very interested in this season.

12:53Well, and John, all we can do is read the tea leaves as those tea leaves are disseminated by CBS Paramount and Skydance. And for the first week of this Tony Romo saga, CBS said nothing, which sent a message. And then last Friday came an unmistakable message in the form of a very terse one line press release. Tony Romo has been placed on leave of absence until further notice. And then they announced that J.J. Watt's taken his place. I think that said everything about his short-term prospects, and it may say plenty about his long-term prospects. And it doesn't look good at this point for Tony Romo to return to CBS.

13:28The question becomes, how do they resolve this? Does he get the full$72 million to walk away? Do they try to use the morals clause in his contract and pigeonhole this entire escapade in Milwaukee into what is a very broad, very vague, very malleable clause in a contract that if a network wants to be aggressive, they could say you violated the morals clause based upon the arrest, based upon the video, based upon the open container. And then they fight it out and they settle it for some number of cents on the dollar, half, 60 percent, who knows? So that's all to be determined but I think once you put the guy on leave and you immediately name his replacement because most of the people who tune in for the games week one they're not going to know about any of this they're just going to tune in the game and they're going to see Jim Nance and they're going to see JJ Watt and they're going to be like what the hell is going on and it'll be interesting to see how CBS explains it from the get-go there's a chance maybe it's all resolved by then and it's just Jim Nance and JJ Watt as your number one announced team on CBS for the entire season but it just doesn't feel to me.

14:34And I know you have this same sense based on what we've seen so far. It sure doesn't seem like Tony Romo's coming back. That's all subject to change. But as of right now, it feels like he's done.

14:44Mike Florio:Yeah, that would be my bet. And I haven't talked to CBS about this, but I've talked to people in the business and you work in the business and you You know, there's not a big appetite for the idea of Tony Romo memes coming out after every game. Tony Romo, part of what he does, he says bizarre things on screen. You know, that's part of his charm, you know, and the way he interacts with Nance. All of a sudden, social will be filled with, is he drunk? Or, you know, has he been drinking before he came into this? into this. That video, if you watch the entire 30-minute video, or I forget how long it is, there are several clippable moments.

15:31Mike Florio:And CBS, they're about to enter into a Super Bowl year. They're about to ingest Warner Brothers' discovery. They're worried about the reputation of CBS Sports. And they're also worried about the reputation of Tony Romo and whether or not, because whether or not he can overcome this, because one thing that I do disagree with you a little bit, a lot of people are going to tune in and be surprised to see J.J. Watt. I mean, this was making TMZ. This made whatever front pages are these days. What do people say now when they say make front pages in the media? But it was a big media story. So I think that there is a lot of people that are going to be tuning in that know this.

16:17You're probably right. You're probably right. You know, most football fans detach from the drip drip of the NFL between the Super Bowl and week one. But sometimes the stuff that goes on is sufficiently significant that it does invade that thing we carry around everywhere we go. That is our connection to the world. And when you start getting alerts about Tony Romo and you click here, you click there, you know the story pretty quickly. So I'll agree with you on that. But I just still think that my if I was making the decisions on this, I'd want to have it all buttoned up before week one. I don't want to have some long, awkward explanation.

16:49I don't want to have this situation where halfway through the season, J.J. Watts knocked back down to number two and Tony Romo comes back at number one. They typically like to have their lineup set from week one through the postseason.

17:04Mike Florio:Yeah, and I couldn't agree more. And I have to believe that David Burson and David Ellison, I have to believe that they pretty much know how this is going to end and and and they're just you know why not just come and and rip the band-aid off this is a pod that is posting on sunday and cbs has their annual nfl preview press conference in new york on tuesday so they you can bet that this is going to be a very big question uh for david burson and for the other cbs executives uh really only the first and only question because because tony romo has always been sort of the big star that goes out i was there i remember there last year you know he He was at a table with Nance and I was one of eight reporters just sitting at the table, just listening to Tony tell stories.

17:49Mike Florio:He's always been a big part of this. So I think we're probably going to see a lot more coming out of CBS or at least something coming out of CBS this week. And then if he doesn't come back, John, you wonder where Tony Romo goes next. Does he get involved in coaching? Does he launch a podcast of his own? Does another network hire him at some point? you know it's it's not impossible to come back from something like this i just feel like that what happened came at a bad time because there was already that external scrutiny on romo and there'd been reporting about internal efforts to try to get him to perform better than he had been but he's handed them a potential silver bullet and we'll see if they're going to take advantage of it and i think last week's press release was a an indication fairly clear one that they are

18:45When others hear noise, T. Rowe Price interprets market signals to find investment opportunities. That's the power of active ETFs from T. Rowe Price. Their portfolio managers approach data from multiple perspectives, analyzing trends and conducting deep research to give you their curiosity-backed, active management expertise. Learn more about their active ETFs at TROPrice.com slash explore ETFs. Exchange-traded funds ETFs are bought and sold at market prices, not NAV. Investors generally incur the cost of the spread between the prices at which shares are bought and sold. Buying and selling shares may result in brokerage commissions, which will reduce returns.

19:26TROPrice Investment Services, Inc.

19:27Mike Florio:Hey, it's Jen Hatmaker. Here's what I've learned in midlife. Joy isn't the reward you earn after all the work is done. Joy is the work. That's what this new series on For the Love is all about. The sacred yes. It's choosing delight, rest, and pleasure on purpose. Because saying yes to yourself, that's the thing that finally lets you fill your table with everybody else. Come find your sacred yes with me. Follow and listen to For the Love wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, and one more topic on this is CBS and Fox, they care deeply about their number two team. That number two team often has a national game and really matters.

20:15Mike Florio:Greg Olson is the analyst on the number two game over at Fox. What does CBS do now? Because I mentioned earlier, Herbstreet, Aikman, and Greg Olson are up. Could they slot J.J. Watt back to the number two and just say, you were so good with Ian Eagle, like that's what we want you to do? Do they just promote Trent Green and sort of keep it from within? Because I think Trent is probably on the third group. They don't really rank him like that outside of the top two. But there are a couple of other knock-on effects if Tony Romo does indeed leave, as we both suspect he will. Well, I think you're right.

20:53And a lot of it depends upon how J.J. Watt performs this year, how he's received this year. He could work his way into that job and never let go of it for as long as he wants to stay in broadcasting where they could decide we're going to tap him on the shoulder and put him back to number two, which wouldn't be as awkward as what Fox did to Greg Olson when they sent him to the number two team and brought in Tom Brady. I mean, the reality is, number one, number two, there aren't many of those seats. And if you want that job, if you want to call these games, travel around to the stadiums, You got to take what they'll ultimately give you.

21:22And CBS is going to have to make the business decision after the season. If Tony Romo isn't coming back, what do we do? Do we keep what in this spot or do we go pursuing one of these other big names? And another name you haven't mentioned who's going to be floating around, I believe, is Travis Kelsey. He's going to and I, you know, whether it's Thursday night, whether it's a Sunday afternoon premiere spot, that's another one that gets thrown into the mix for CBS to make a decision. And then you may have to make the decision, John, how much do I want to pay Troy Aikman? or Travis Kelsey or somebody who's at that very, very top?

21:54And can I get J.J. Watt in the number one spot for maybe a lot less than these other guys would command?

22:00Mike Florio:Well, exactly. And I think Troy is on like about 18 million. I think he got like a dollar more than Romo's contract. It was a competitive thing for him. But ESPN had to pay that. If you remember, ESPN had a booth that was not up to snuff in terms of calling NFL games. The NFL demanded that they improved it. So what did they do? They went and they raided Fox's first booth. They got Joe Buck and they got Troy Aikman. I'm not sure if CBS feels the same sort of level of angst that ESPN did then because CBS, I think if they look at their lineup, it's a deep lineup. And so if you can lose Romo, you can bring in J.J.

22:46Mike Florio:Watt to number one. You lose J.J. Watt on the two, you can bring Trent Green into that one. So I don't think that they feel that they need to make a big splash in terms of that. And they're going to get big games no matter what. I know there was a period of time when ESPN and the NFL weren't necessarily getting along, where the Monday night schedule wasn't as good as it could have been. But those Sunday afternoon games, the 425 p.m. Eastern kickoff when it's the doubleheader on Fox or CBS rotating back and forth, that's a huge, huge game. Significant ratings, bigger audiences than any of the primetime games for the most part.

23:21So I think the NFL will want CBS to take care of it, and it will be taken care of. And there are surely some within CBS that will believe that J.J. Watt is instantly an improvement over Romo because of just the way. And I don't see a big difference between Tony Romo of 2017 and Tony Romo of 2025. It may just be that people's tastes changed. He's kind of quirky. He's authentic. He, at times, says things that make people say, what the hell was he saying? But, you know, you get used to that as a consumer, and that becomes part of his charm. So there will be people there, though, that are happy to move on, and they'll move on to somebody who will placate the NFL, and they'll continue to get great games, and they'll continue to be 25 to 30 million people whenever they have a late afternoon window tuning in to watch it.

24:08Mike Florio:Mike, I'm going to give you some news here. Right before we started this pod, Fox was giving their quarterly earnings report and Lachlan Murdoch went up and said, you know what, we're waiting until 2029 and then we're going to reopen our deal and talk to the NFL then, which I have to tell you uh i'm just kind of processing this as i'm talking but it came as a surprise to me because everything that i heard was that the uh the leading up to that is that the the nfl has sort of stepped back from uh going after you know billions and billions and billions of more they were going they wanted increases of course but you know not as much as uh some of the early numbers that were floated and the networks were keen on trying to get the nfl for an extra four three four five years uh if if that comes to pass if uh if what lachlan says is true it means that the the renewals for the for the nfl um they're not going to really open them up for anybody for until 2029 and one of the big storylines of this season that i was going to keep an eye on uh could be going up in smoke.