The question of whether Tony Romo will continue to call NFL games for CBS has somewhat obscured the question of whether CBS will continue to broadcast NFL games.
Like Fox, NBC, Prime Video, and YouTube, the CBS contract runs through 2029, once (as expected) the NFL exercises its prerogative to end the contracts four years early. Unlike the other networks, CBS has undergone a “change in control,” which allows the NFL to reopen the current deal.
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The NFL already has embarked on active negotiations with CBS, with some reports suggesting the league may seek to bump the CBS annual fee from $2.1 billion to $3 billion — effective immediately. More recent reports have pointed to a stall in the negotiations, fueled by legal issues arising from its parent company’s effort to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.
At Tuesday’s season-preview press event, CBS Sports president David Berson addressed the situation.
“We’re in constant conversation; we have so much business with them on so many other levels,” Berson told Drew Lerner of Awful Announcing. “There’s nothing to report on this right now, but the relationship is outstanding. We’re talking to them every day. I mentioned the viewership success we’ve had, I mentioned they covet reach so much; CBS is the number one network 17 of the last 18 years . . . so they really value what we provide and we also value what they’re providing. So conversations continue, but there’s nothing at this stage to talk about.”
The NFL could, in theory, pull the plug on CBS and take its games back to the market. But who would assume the CBS Sunday-afternoon slate? The other networks have their existing windows. None of them presumably would want to add half of the full Sunday afternoon slate of games.
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And it would be important to keep the Sunday afternoon slate on broadcast TV. A pivot of a large swath of the most traditional “free” games to streaming would create more political pushback for the NFL.
Of the broadcast networks, Fox already has its Sunday afternoon games. That leaves NBC and ABC, both of which have prime-time packages.
If, alternatively, CBS does a new deal at a significant bump, what happens with the other networks? CBS probably wouldn’t relish the opportunity to pay significantly more while the other partners are still paying the amounts due under the existing deals.
The entire situation is delicate and tricky and likely at this point to lead to no new deals before the start of the 2026 regular season. Which is what the NFL seemed to want.
And so the can will apparently be kicked into 2027. Which, coincidentally, may give the Commissioner even more leverage in ongoing talks to extend his contract, which expires in March.
