Just four months ago, following the Super Bowl in February, YouTube seemed like the frontrunner to land a coveted five-game package of regular-season NFL contests. YouTube executives were happy with their results from the season, including their exclusive São Paulo game. And, of course, YouTube can afford to pay whatever it costs to land any package, let alone a five-pack. But about a month ago, Netflix suddenly picked up those games, leaving YouTube empty handed.

Immediately, some rights-holders worried that the powerful streamer would prove to be more bark than bite when it comes to investing in sports rights. But LightShed Partners’ Rich Greenfield doesn’t believe that the sports business should read too much into the NFL deal misfire. I spoke to Rich for tomorrow’s episode of the Varsity podcast—a conversation we’re giving you a lightly edited preview of tonight.

John Ourand: What’s your perspective on what’s going on right now with the NFL and the broadcasters?

Rich Greenfield: The most interesting development over the past month or so was YouTube not getting games after what appeared to be an incredibly successful game down in Brazil last year. It was surprising to see YouTube—and yes, they still have Sunday Ticket—out of broadcasting linear live games on their own. It was certainly not something we expected. Netflix came in and appears to have outbid YouTube, which is hard to imagine given the scale of Google today. But financial discipline is real. YouTube doesn’t have a dual revenue stream model the way Netflix does.

What’s interesting now is that the Netflix deal goes through 2029, which coincides with the date when the NFL can opt out of its broadcast TV deals. It feels like the NFL is saying: if you don’t renew by fall or winter of 2026, who knows what happens in 2030? My guess is, seeing the excitement around sports right now—you think about what’s happening in New York right now with the NBA championship—it’s hard to imagine the current partners not trying to lock the NFL in for as long as humanly possible.

What does YouTube’s lack of a deal mean for YouTube and sports? What should other leagues like MLB or the NHL take away from this?

YouTube is still spending a heck of a lot of money on Sunday Ticket, so it’s hard to say they’re out just because it didn’t win a five-game package. The NFL clearly has a strong interest in developing multiple partners; the way sports rights work, you need more bidders than packages. Just like they built up Amazon for a number of years before they got Thursday Night Football, I believe the NFL is very interested in building their relationship with both Google/YouTube and Netflix. The NFL sold a huge package to YouTube in Sunday Ticket; it had not sold a huge package to Netflix—it went from two games to five.

The NFL needs the tension. The NFL wants to have more bidders because it wants to really rethink what happens in 2030. The risk for linear TV is, what if the packages look different? Could the NFL create more of an event package? Netflix is clearly telling the NFL that they like events. It doesn’t want a traditional linear package. Could you have two opening day games? Could you have two Thanksgiving, two Christmas, maybe two wild cards? How could you recompose packages?

Just because the packages look the way they do now does not mean that’s what they’ll look like in 2030 and beyond. And I think that’s the ultimate leverage that the NFL has, is fear of change. If I’m a broadcast partner, I probably really like what I have now, and the last thing I want is anything to change.

What’s the likelihood that the NFL will move away from broadcast?

The reality is, there is no league that has put as many games on broadcast TV, and is [more of] a believer in broadcast TV, than the NFL. I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon. The entire broadcast model relies on the NFL. I can’t imagine CBS, NBC, ABC… these businesses don’t exist the way they do if they don’t have NFL rights. They’re going to want to recut these deals sooner than later. And my guess is before the end of 2026, these deals get recut in some form.

There’s a risk for broadcasters if they wait until 2029, but there’s also a risk if they come to the table now and the NFL wants a billion dollars more a year.

The NFL is only going to do something that’s a win-win for their partners; destroying your partners doesn’t create a great long-term business. But when you hear that MLB is renewing in 2028, the NHL is talking about an early renewal—if the NFL doesn’t buy out those options, maybe it’s a 2027 event. I’d be very surprised if by 2027 this didn’t happen. The way this historically works is you recut the deals, the costs go up, and then if you’re a broadcaster or a cable provider, you have to work with all of your partners, whether that’s Charter, whether that’s YouTube TV, and you need to basically alter those deals to afford the step up in cost. And my guess is that it will continue to drive the pricing of all of these bundles higher and higher. Sure, it leads to more cord-cutting, but ultimately it gets passed on to consumers in that the bundle keeps getting more expensive.

Who is best situated right now among the TV companies and streamers?

Amazon is in an interesting position. They were the incremental bidder that probably helped drive costs up last time. But here’s the thing: If Amazon didn’t have the NFL, they’d be fine. The story doesn’t get worse without the NFL. Yes, it hurts their advertising business, but there’s no investor buying or selling Amazon because of the NFL. That puts Amazon in a very different place than everybody else.

I’ve been struck by the fiscal discipline the streamers have shown.

Look at NBC and the NBA. You can’t actually make the math work. ESPN did not need the NBA. ESPN gets its affiliate fees because of the NFL, not the NBA. There is a really important differential here: Streaming is interesting and helps these companies build an ad business. There’s no way Amazon or Netflix is building advertising without the NFL, but it is not existential to either of them. They will both survive and flourish with or without the NFL. That’s very different from the others.

I’ve been interested in Charter’s approach to the business—creating a big bundle with all the broadcast and cable channels and a lot of the streamers. Has Charter figured something out? Has cord-cutting bottomed out?

Pay TV is in sub-70 million multichannel homes, but cord-shaving is a bigger and bigger deal. Charter is zagging where everyone else is zigging. While DirecTV and YouTube are doing skinnier bundles, Charter is doing the super-deluxe bundle: all the channels plus all the streaming. The jury is still out. If it was working so well, you’d think Comcast would copy it. They haven’t. And if you wanted to watch every NFL game, buying all the streaming services for six months would be far cheaper than Charter, unless you want all those other channels. For the first time, consumers have real choice.

It sounds like a tough road for linear TV executives.

On the flip side, the bundled experience is still a better viewing experience. Most people I know have dropped cable for YouTube TV because it’s just better. My biggest struggle with ESPN Unlimited since launch: How do you build a single-party streaming service? You only get so many games, and people still want to flip between games, watch a different college football game. Having multiple channels aggregated together is still really powerful.

I think if those NFL deals don’t get recut, and somebody loses the NFL in 2030, that’s when you’d actually worry about the future of linear TV. But that’s exactly why they renew: to perpetuate the health and longevity of linear.

No Cheap Seats today since we ran long. See you all on Thursday,

John