TEN Acquires ICE's NFL Rights in Primetime

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Neve Campbell (Teen Entertainment Network New York) (left), Jessica Lowndes (The ICE Phederation) (right)


National Football League Mid-Town East Office - Manhattan, New York, United States
Wednesday October 23, 2013 @ 9:46 AM/ET.


MANHATTAN, NY - TEN CEO Neve Campbell makes a great deal with the she-devil herself Phederation CEO Jessica Lowndes to better her new network TEN as they establish their new sports division. The deal that the two studios made was for the rights to the second NFL primetime package that is shared with SBC Sports this season on their secondary network TSN. The primetime package includes rights to several Monday Night and Thursday Night football games from the National Football League. ICE's Wide World of Sports held the rights to the other package using their secondary network PDN to air games this season. ICE understands that they will take a hit revenue wise not having the rights anymore as last week's Monday Night Football game made $1,400,000 in ad-revenue for the network and the ICE Phederation as a whole. This could be the beginning of the end of ICE's relationship with the NFL.

ICE has the rights to the other NFL package that is a lot more bigger than the primetime package which is another reason why Jessica Lowndes didn't care about losing this package. That is the Sunday daytime package that they air with ROD. That package is usually the highest rated of the NFL packages and includes the prized Sunday 7pm overrun and Game of the Week for the doubleheader weeks. The afternoon packages guarantees the rights to the NFC and AFC Championship games in January before the Super Bowl. The best thing about these packages is that ICE and ROD have more flexibility that the other packages to get a say on when they air games so ICE can tell the NFL what playoff games they choose to air in January. The NFL is expected to open up the afternoon packages to 3-4 networks next season which spreads the games out more during daytime.

Jessica Lowndes told reporters that the network actually is in great position to take the loss because she says TEN needs the package of games more than they do as ICE has a mammoth exclusive deal this season airing their own football league of games from the WFL which made almost as much as the NFL packages did. On Thursday during the first night of sweeps WFL Football actually made $215,000 more than Thursday Night Football in ad-revenue. WFL Football made $1,100,000 for PDN while the NFL had $885,000 over on TSN. ICE Sports President Steve Walters told reporters that they are going to start selling packages of WFL Football games next season in fall 2014 to the other networks as ROD CEO Ashley Greene had interest in games this season but ICE wasn't in position to sell their games this season and he said he is working closely with the ICE executives on possibly competing with Monday Night Football by airing WFL games in that slot. It's not known what is airing on PDN after Bradleys vs. Van Horns from 9-11pm, PDN was previously scheduling new movie premieres there before they aired Monday Night Football for the first time this season this past week.

WFL playoff season gets underway in December and some games will be airing on ICE including the first ever championship game so that can cause a major headache for advertisers during that period and ICE is going to be able to recoup a lot of money on this deal as the Winter Athletic Games Time Trials are coming up in the middle of November. Steve Walters did mention that ICE is going to sell rights to some of their time trial action this season to the other networks.

For TEN this is a grand deal and the first big one for the studio as they now have the rights to the #1 professional sports league in America. This will give their network extra exposure getting new viewers and a bunch of casual viewers watching their promos to help grow their network. The big 3 networks ICE, ROD, and SBC all have grown exponentially since 2009 when they all first had the rights to the league. This also helps TEN make more money as they are guaranteed around a million dollars every week just from airing the NFL once a week through the end of the season.

This acquisition for TEN was free for this season and it lasts for a 2-month period as TEN will be sharing the primetime rights with TSN as both networks over in the Federal Division will be alternating on any given week between Monday Night Football and Thursday Night Football, TSN has been airing Thursday game for three straight weeks but it is not known which network airs Monday or Thursday games during the week of November 4th. TEN will takeover PDN's package right away starting on Monday October 28, 2013 at 9pm in a divisional NFC West matchup between the Seattle Seahawks and St. Louis Rams at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, Missouri the site of this weekend's World Series action. The deal also includes the rights to one playoff game in January, the round hasn't been decided yet since the NFL is going to work with ICE's Wide World of Sports on what dates are available to them since they are airing the start of the Winter Athletic Games around that time.

The National Football League and NITRO Officials also announced that all of their primetime NFL games except for Sunday Night Football on SBC will start at 9:00pm giving the networks a chance to air regular programming for one hour before the games at 8pm. NITRO Officials are telling head programmers for each network to keep their 9-11pm slots on Mondays or 9-12am slots on Thursdays open for the rest of the season until Christmas on any given chance that they have to air one of the two packages.

The NFL package will not be free next year as it will be a very expensive premium package that could last for up to 2 years. SBC has the rights to the Super Bowl this year on Sunday February 2, 2014 from MetLife Stadium in the shadows of New York City. ICE has a choice between airing Super Bowl 50 or 51 in 2016 or 2017 but Super Bowl 49 could be either on TEN or ROD or possibly RTN if they have any interest next season in an NFL package. The loser of that Super Bowl will get the rights for sure to 50 or 51. ICE could be leaving the NFL in 2014 so that will suspend their Super Bowl rights to another network. ROD has never aired a Super Bowl before. SBC will be airing their first Super Bowl this season although they had the rights back in 2011 but that television season was cancelled and there was no Super Bowl on NITRO Television during 2012 because of the reboot starting the day after and in 2013 was another cancelled season. The first and only time the Super Bowl aired on NITRO was on ICE in 2010 so this year's Super Bowl will only be the second time.

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I'm glad TEN took the deal as we were only airing games because there wasn't enough networks at the time. Now that this deal has been taken care of we will look for another network to take the afternoon games on Sunday off of our hands by November 10th as we've committed to airing the games the next two weekends. If this happens our Super Bowl commitment is broken for the future.

When pilot season starts we'll sell the rights to a package of games for this season. Since SBC can't air afternoon NFL games due to Sunday Night Football rights we'll offer them some of our games since they haven't been able to compete on Sunday afternoons with their programming.