The top NFL media stories of 2024: Tom Brady debuts, Netflix steps in and more

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

The top NFL media stories of 2024: Tom Brady debuts,

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

steps in and more

If you want some long-term relationship advice, I offer you this: Find someone who loves you as much as news outlets love end-of-the-year content.

The New Yorker

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

and it holds up today. Among other reasons: It spatially organizes information and promises a story that’s finite.

The NFL story will, of course, continue in 2025 and beyond, but in the space below, we offer eight NFL media stories that captured our interest in 2024.

---

1. Tom Brady begins his NFL broadcasting journey

Fox has the broadcast rights to the Super Bowl this year, which means Brady will call the league’s most important game in his rookie season as a TV analyst. He is 15 games into a 10-year, $375 million deal with Fox, a journey that has prompted plenty of commentary on his performance, including multiple pieces from this author.

Brady’s broadcasting work has improved during the season — not to the point of being an elite TV analyst, but the progress is noticeable. Still, the long-term prediction here is that Brady’s juggling act as Las Vegas Raiders owner and TV analyst, and the restrictions that come with that, feels unsustainable for Fox and Brady.

Tom Brady has improved as a game broadcaster, but February’s Super Bowl looms as the ultimate test of his progress. (Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)

2.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

lands an NFL package of games

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

and the NFL announced in May a three-season deal for Christmas Day games through 2026. That deal becomes even more magnified given

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

securing the exclusive broadcast rights in the United States for the 2027 and 2031 editions of the Women’s World Cup. These are significant signals to the marketplace (along with its WWE rights deal, given its live element) that

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

has shifted from being interested in sports-adjacent properties to being a legitimate sports rights holder.

The streaming giant aired the Kansas City Chiefs–Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens–Houston Texans games on Christmas Day and largely succeeded in avoiding a glitch-filled rerun of its Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight event.

GO DEEPER

‘Watch what

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

does’: Unwrapping the NFL’s Christmas Day experiment

3. Peacock airs a regular-season game from São Paulo

The Philadelphia Eagles–Green Bay Packers game on Sept. 6 was the NFL’s first-ever regular-season game in South America and aired exclusively on Peacock, the streaming network’s third exclusive NFL game following the Buffalo Bills–Los Angeles Chargers regular-season game in December 2023 and the Miami Dolphins-Chiefs AFC wild-card playoff game last January.

The result was a significant viewership win for the league and the streamer. Peacock delivered 14.2 million viewers for Eagles-Packers, well above the 7.3 million for Bills-Chargers and Peacock’s second-best NFL streaming audience ever only behind the Chiefs-Dolphins game (23 million viewers). The numbers include figures from the over-the-air markets in which the games ran.

The NFL will play eight international games in 2025, including in Madrid, as Spain will be the sixth country to host an NFL regular-season game. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and Chiefs owner Clark Hunt have talked openly about

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

in the near term, per this report from SBJ’s Ben Fischer. It’s clear we will soon see a Sunday morning window with a new international media-rights package.

4. Super Bowl LVIII sets TV ratings record

We live in an apples-to-pomegranates world when it comes to comparing the sports viewership of today versus yesteryear, due to factors including new out-of-home viewership data and cord-cutters and cord-nevers. Using today’s metrics, via Nielsen and

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Analytics, the Chiefs’ 25-22 overtime victory over the San Francisco 49ers in February’s Super Bowl averaged 123.7 million viewers across television and streaming platforms. That makes it the most-viewed program in history, shattering the previous mark of 115.1 million for Kansas City’s last-minute win over Philadelphia in the previous Super Bowl.

Fans watch Super Bowl LVIII outside Chase Center in San Francisco. The game was the highest-rated program in television history. (Loren Elliott / Getty Images)

5. The rise of alt-broadcasts

The alternate broadcasts of NFL games launched into a new stratosphere in 2024

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

airing on ESPN+ and Disney+, and NBC Sports making its NFL alternate broadcast debut on Peacock with last week’s Texans-Chiefs game. It follows alt-broadcasts on Nickelodeon and ESPN’s now long-standing Manning Brothers broadcasts and one using “Toy Story.”

6. The ‘New Heights’ podcast blows up

The popular podcast — hosted by brothers Jason Kelce, the Eagles’ center from 2011-2023, and Travis Kelce, the current Chiefs tight end — inked a deal with

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

’s podcast network, Wondery, in 2024 to be the program’s new home.

The show has found itself on measurement lists of the biggest podcasts in the United States and has nearly 2.5 million subscribers on

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. One of the interesting notes in the deal is Wondery’s plans to translate the podcast to different languages to increase its global audience, including in NFL-strong markets such as the United Kingdom and Mexico. That’s a blank space for NFL fans.

GO DEEPER

The Kelce brothers and the ‘Heights’ of podcast popularity

7. New broadcast rules for increased access

It was not an accident that you saw more in-game interviews during NFL games this season. Last May, the NFL broadcasting department outlined access changes for the NFL’s television partners after a review between the league and its media rights holders. The shared goal? To enhance the game content that we see as NFL viewers. The new rules included in-game coach interviews for all games, pregame player interviews for all games, network pregame locker room coverage, preseason player interviews, and coaches’ booth network cameras. Look for it to continue.

8. NFL ordered to pay $4.7 billion in “Sunday Ticket” antitrust trial … only to see it overturned

In August, the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles overturned a $4.7 billion verdict against the NFL for colluding to raise prices for its “NFL Sunday Ticket” television package. The judge disqualified expert testimony used by the jury to determine damages. (The jury’s verdict had threatened to upend the league’s strategy of selling exclusive television packages to broadcasters.)

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

for the Ninth Circuit.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, a decision is likely many months, if not longer, away.

GO DEEPER

Imagining NFL on TV in the year 2030: Tom Brady out, Travis Kelce in?

(Top photo of a

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

“Christmas Gameday” banner at Wednesday’s Chiefs-Steelers game: Mark Alberti / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#top #NFL #media #stories #Tom #Brady #debuts #

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#steps

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

For verified travel tips and real support, visit: https://hopzone.eu/