Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch broke some major news during his company’s quarterly earnings call on Thursday morning.
After about a year of speculation that the NFL and its incumbent broadcast partners would engage in talks to renegotiate media rights deals several years prior to the league’s opt-out options at the end of the decade, with the upshot being that the NFL would earn more money from its broadcast partners now and, in exchange, remove its opt-out clauses, guaranteeing its partners remain in business with the league well into the 2030s, Fox has decided it will instead roll the dice and reengage with the NFL following the 2029-30 season.
Murdoch told investors that Fox “will not be making any amendments” to its current NFL media rights deal until the league’s opt-out option hits following 2029-30. The Fox CEO added that the decision was made as a result of talks with the NFL.
Fox CEO: Decision a result of talks with NFL
— Brian Steinberg (@bristei) August 6, 2026
“We don’t see any changes to our contractual terms until the 2030 season,” Murdoch told investors later in the call, offering little detail about why or how this decision was made. “Our relationship with the NFL is an incredibly positive one. We engage with them all the time,” he continued, adding he sees “a clear path forward” following the league’s opt-out.
Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said on the company’s Q4 earnings call just now that it won’t look to open up its NFL deal until after the 2029-30 season.
“We don’t see any changes to our contractual terms until the 2030 season.”
— Josh Carpenter (@JoshACarpenter) August 6, 2026
Fox CEO: Will take up rights talks much closer to the end of the contract. ‘Very pleased’ with recent decision to strike deal for Mexican rights and sees ‘a clear path forward’ after 2029
— Brian Steinberg (@bristei) August 6, 2026
The comments come as a considerable development in the league’s effort to negotiate new terms to its broadcast deals, which the NFL sees as significantly undervalued in the current market for media rights. Fox’s decision comes just days after reports surfaced that talks between the NFL and CBS had stalled on account of Paramount’s impending merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. Prior to Murdoch’s confirmation that Fox’s decision was a result of talks it had with the NFL, CBS was the only network to have been confirmed in active discussions with the league over its media rights.
Fox’s decision perhaps shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Once the NFL made clear its desires to renegotiate broadcast rights early, angling to increase its annual TV revenue by billions of dollars, Fox launched a covert political pressure campaign reaching the highest levels of federal government, including the president. As a result, numerous arms of the federal government began scrutinizing the NFL’s media business. The Department of Justice launched an investigation into potential anticompetitive practices from the NFL. The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission regularly opined on whether the NFL was running afoul of its antitrust exemption, which allows the league to bundle and sell its media rights to broadcasters in packages on behalf of its 32 franchises. Congressional hearings were held on the move of live sports broadcasts from linear television to streaming. Legislation was announced addressing the fragmentation of live sports broadcasts.
Whether any of these efforts had real standing to change how the NFL conducts its media business is unclear. But the onslaught of political pressure, at the very least, created a roadblock for the league that forced its timeline for negotiations to shift back.
Now, the question falls to the NFL’s other broadcast partners. CBS will presumably still need to come to new terms with the league prior to the 2029-30 opt-out because of the change-of-control provision triggered in its current contract following Skydance’s purchase of Paramount last summer. The NFL, if it chooses, could exit its CBS deal early because of that clause, whereas it is locked in with every other partner through at least the end of the decade.
Fox’s decision, however, might convince the NFL’s other partners — NBC, ESPN, and Prime Video — to wait until the league’s opt-out options hit before renegotiating. At the very least, it would ensure their media rights bills don’t increase by potentially billions of dollars in the interim years.
If that is the case, the NFL’s efforts to redo its deals early could reasonably be seen as a major failure of the league. However, it opens up a whole host of possibilities for how the league might choose to restructure its broadcast deals a few years from now, when it can break clean and divvy up inventory in whatever way it wants.
Much more to come.
