There is no longer any middle ground to occupy in American Life, no liminal space from which to stand at a remove and watch as the thunderous parade of blahblahblah goes marching along. Every exchange, no matter how inconsequential, is an occasion for shuddering bombast, and every twinge of disquiet a call for squabbling and foot-stomping. The tech weasels who brought you the “attention economy” have turned us all into the sort of shouty hysterics who phone into WEEI the morning after a Pats loss. But unlike the still-buzzed-from-last-night Fitzy from Winthrop, we don’t have to wait two hours to get our chance to vent.
One of the latest trifles that has made a whole lot of people adopt the trappings of the aggrieved first-time, long-time bellyacher is the NFL’s move to stage a Wild Card playoff game behind a $5.99 paywall. In exchange for a $110 million check from the deep-pocketed swells at Comcast, the league has granted the rights to Saturday night’s Dolphins-Chiefs contest to the streaming service Peacock. While this is an unwelcome development for those who don’t know how to steal things from the internet, the response from sports media’s screaming heads has been overwrought—and predictably so.
Chris Russo did his full-throated egalitarian bit on Wednesday’s edition of First Take, and in deriding the greed of the league and its owners, Mad Dog served as a reminder that everyone on TV is doing a bit. “Arthur Blank has made enough money!” Russo honked, as he broke down the economics of the streaming deal. “You mean to tell me right now, that the NFL, that’s got packages for billions and billions and billions of dollars—you’re gonna tell me right now that they had to sell this Miami-Kansas City game to Peacock for $110 million?!? Do the math! There are 32 teams. That’s $3.5 million per owner!”
More like $3.4 million a pop, but the point stands. As with much of what passes through Russo’s larynx, it’s perhaps best to read the above (and below) as if the words were laid out in ALL CAPS.
Russo went on to bemoan how unfair the arrangement is for older fans who’ve been following the Chiefs since Lenny Dawson was sparking up halftime Lucky Strikes, but quickly ditched the man-of-the-people stance in favor of more yelling about the relentless accumulation of capital. After making the theologically unsound assertion that the NFL has more money than God, Russo concluded that the grab for an extra 11 billion pennies was an act of porcine gluttony. “That is being a pig, that’s what that’s being, and that’s out of line!” Russo bellowed.
As an equally excitable Italian-American, watching Russo fly off the handle at the merest provocation is basically AV comfort food, although I’m not convinced that the NFL-Peacock scheme is something over which it’s worth testing the structural integrity of one’s arterial pathways. The NFL (and NBC, for that matter) knew full well going into this deal that charging six bucks for a must-see playoff matchup is a big eff-you to the fans who support the game. But the thing is—and this cannot be overstated—nobody at 345 Park Ave. or 30 Rock gives a rodent’s fuzzy little bum about anything other than making money.
Like, duh. Frankly, it’s weird that some people haven’t figured this out for themselves, but: The game is rigged, and you’re always going to lose. Your happiness is neither assured nor is it much valued. Nobody cares. Money is everything. Death is coming, no matter how often you try to look the other way. Thank you for listening to my TED Talk.
But here’s the thing: As much as a very vocal segment of the sports-media industrial complex believes that the Peacock playoff will blow up in the NFL’s face—Bill Simmons earlier this week predicted that Dolphins-Chiefs is “is going to be one of the all-time sports television disasters”—the facts suggest otherwise. Yes, Peacock’s reach is suboptimal; as Comcast president Mike Cavanagh revealed last month at an industry conference, the streaming service has signed on “30 million paying subscribers,” which is about a third of the number of households served by the NBC broadcast flagship. Peacock’s sub count is also dwarfed by legacy cable networks like ESPN (70.2 million homes) and NFL Network (52.3 million). Clearly, the Tua-Mahomes shootout is destined to be the year’s least-watched playoff game.
Now, as much as the NFL is forever banging on about its unparalleled consumption, the ratings issue is of lesser concern for Comcast/NBCUniversal. As was the case when Peacock carried the Dec. 23 Bills-Chargers game, the fourth quarter of Saturday night’s Wild Card outing will air with no commercial interruptions. That’s a feature, not a bug. Aside from providing newcomers to Peacock with the luxury of an ad-free 15 minutes, the elimination of four commercial pods indicates that the suits aren’t looking at this like a typical play for marketing bucks. Sacrificing one quarter of the 12 that NBCU has lined up this weekend is a calculated risk, and the number of new conscripts will not make up for the loss in ad revenue. But Comcast is more invested in the long-term growth of Peacock than the immediate adrenaline spike that comes with an extra $18 million to $20 million in commercial cash.
Or, as NBC Sports president Rick Cordella told reporters this week: “It’s not just to get people to watch on Saturday night. It’s to get people to watch and experience all this various content that we have across the Peacock service, whether it’s Universal Films or library content like The Office and Parks and Rec.”
The goal, then, is to beef up Peacock’s sub roster while the slow-motion evolution from TV to streaming rolls merrily along. Per Nielsen, linear-TV usage in November accounted for just 53.2% of total video consumption, while streaming gobbled up 36.1% of the pie. Vanilla TV is still the NFL’s primary delivery system—this year, NBC served up 93% of Sunday Night Football’s overall deliveries—but both the league and its media partners want to ensure that they’re both staying one step ahead of the curve.
Or as NFL executive VP of media distribution Hans Schroeder put it Wednesday, while the league will “continue to be very focused about having the widest possible reach for our games,” it also plans to keep “expanding on digital and growing our presence on the screens and in the places and platforms where we know our fans are spending their time.”
When asked if the NFL would assign another exclusive playoff game to a streaming service next year, Schroeder suggested that there’s no turning back from the digital future. “We’re going to have the playoff games on Peacock as well,” Schroeder said, in reference to NBC’s practice of simulcasting all its NFL games on the subscription platform. “As it relates to the Wild Card game exclusively, we’re excited to continue the conversation. This is a deal for this year, but it’s an NFL Playoff game. I expect there will be a lot of interest in it.”
Two days before Christmas, the Bills-Chargers game averaged 7.33 million viewers, of whom 1.12 million were fans who watched the local TV feeds in Buffalo and Los Angeles. The NFL and Peacock will be happy enough if Saturday’s streaming playoff can triple that late-December turnout, which would keep it in line with the lower-rated Wild Card games of a decade ago, when the very first playoffs began airing on cable. (And yes, people griped about that, too.) Only an unmitigated “disaster,” as Simmons put it, can derail the inevitable.
However things shake out this weekend, it’s definitely Travis Kelce’s girlfriend’s fault if the Chiefs lose. Sorry, Swifties: Just workshopping one of the ear-splitting and wearisome hot takes that we’re all duty bound to serve up whenever the wind changes directions.