From Silicon Valley tech giants to the longtime power brokers of traditional television, there is one reality everyone in media eventually runs into: if they want a piece of the NFL, they have to go through Commissioner Roger Goodell. The league’s grip on live sports remains unmatched, turning its media rights into one of the most valuable prizes in entertainment. But as the NFL keeps chasing bigger and bigger deals, a growing question hangs over the sport: at what point does the pursuit of maximum profit start pushing too far?

Here’s the thing: When the NFL signed its 11-year, $111 billion media rights deal in 2021, it locked in CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN, and Amazon, and put the league at the center of live TV. But Goodell wasn’t satisfied. At the Super Bowl week presser in February 2025, he stated that he felt the NFL was always ‘undervalued.’ Interestingly, ESPN’s deal alone sits at about $2.7 billion a year. NBC’s package is expected to rise to roughly $3 billion annually. However, these numbers are out of step with what the networks can actually sell back in advertising and affiliate fees. And former ESPN President John Skipper, who had run the show for nearly a decade, was asked about Goodell’s current push on Pablo Torre Finds Out.

“People are talking about Goodell, ‘Will he kill the golden goose?’” Skipper said on the show. “I do think there’s a dangerous scenario here. I don’t know what the books look like at NBC or CBS, but everybody’s losing money on their NFL deal. It’s a loss leader.”

The NFL is clearly eyeing an even bigger payday after watching the NBA land a staggering $76 billion media-rights agreement. And for the league’s broadcast and streaming partners, the stakes are just as high. Football draws audiences unlike anything else on television, making it far safer to keep paying up than to risk losing access to the NFL altogether. But there is a flip side to it.

If the league’s media partners continue paying whatever it takes to keep the league on their platforms, somebody else will eventually feel the pressure. Bigger rights deals mean football consumes an even larger share of these companies’ content budgets, leaving less room for everything else. And history has shown that when corporate costs climb, consumers usually end up absorbing part of the hit.

So, if subscription prices and streaming costs rise again, the fallout could land hardest on younger NFL fans, many of whom are not as financially secure as older viewers, along with the casual audience the league still depends on to keep growing.

With the networks having to pay a huge amount to show the NFL on their platforms, Skipper also noted that CBS is “not generating $2 billion worth of advertising” on its package. The gap between what the league takes in and what the networks can monetize keeps widening. And yet, the league keeps pushing the price up. However, Skipper revealed the Commissioner is aware of certain things that have prompted this move.

“Roger is pushing the deals out further because he knows the traditional media companies are only going to get less powerful and less wealthy,” Skipper added. “And he’s going to make it, he’s very cleverly brought all the streamers in, the big tech companies gradually, because they can afford to pay $4 billion – $5 billion.”

Fox’s market cap sits at around $24 billion, approximately. In contrast, Amazon’s market cap is north of $2.8 trillion, and Google’s is near $4.8 trillion. YouTube, Google’s streaming arm, broadcast a live NFL game on its platform for the first time in the 2025 season. Their free broadcast of the season opener in Brazil between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Los Angeles Chargers brought in 17.3 million global viewers.

Now, companies like these do not need the NFL to survive the way CBS or Fox once did. But when the buying pattern shifts that far, the leverage tends to shift along with it.

“The next commissioner is going to deal with the fact that these big tech companies have more leverage over you, and they don’t need your product as much as the traditional broadcasters do,” Skipper continued. “The NFL is at the position right now because these traditional media companies cannot exist without an NFL package. If the Delta gets to be billions of dollars, they will have to decide to exist without it.”

But if the legacy networks opt out of their contract with the league because of the price tag, what does it mean for Roger Goodell and Co.? Getting inked with multi-billion-dollar corporations seems like a massive upgrade first, but Skipper, who worked on a deal with Netflix, knows how they operate.

“Netflix negotiated with us over the per diem cost of our production crew on an inexpensive documentary,” Skipper revealed.

If Netflix haggles on a low-budget documentary, it will certainly not blink at squeezing a rights deal with the league. Apple can walk away and still sell phones, tablets, and laptops. Amazon can walk away and still move packages and dominate streaming. The league is an undeniable asset for the legacy networks, but for the tech giants? Not so much. And to make matters worse, the pressure is already spilling out of the boardroom.

The NFL braces for pricing scrutiny

The Department of Justice has recently opened a probe into the NFL’s broadcast rights structure. The DOJ is looking into whether the league is hurting consumers by pushing more games behind streaming paywalls. Roger Goodell does have the authority to sell all the broadcast rights to his games, per the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, but this pressure isn’t coming from just one side.

Fox is part of this fight, too. It pays more than $2 billion a year for its Sunday afternoon package, and the company has reportedly used political pressure, including White House-level help, to resist higher costs. Inside the league, Fox and the Murdoch family are seen as central to the DOJ probe. And then, there are President Donald Trump’s comments against the pricings themselves.

“There’s something very sad when they take football away from many people. Very sad. I don’t like it,” Trump said in an interview earlier this month. “They’re making a lot of money. They could make a bit less and let the people see. You have people who live for Sunday. They can’t think about anything else, and then all of a sudden, they’re going to have to pay a $1000 a game. It’s crazy. So, I’m not happy about it.”

Interestingly, when the Green Bay Packers play the Los Angeles Rams in the 2026 season’s Week 12 matchup, the game streams exclusively on Netflix. Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin has already answered to that with the ‘For the Fans Act’, written to stop that kind of setup and let the city watch its home team play for free.

“As the cost of just about everything continues to rise, the NFL is once again asking Wisconsinites to spend their hard-earned money on another streaming service,” Baldwin noted last week. “Enough is enough. My For the Fans Act would stop this exact scenario and prevent Wisconsin families from being forced to pay for Netflix just to watch the Packers play this Thanksgiving.”

Baldwin’s office has also noted that families following multiple leagues can face more than $1,500 a year in streaming bills across the NFL, MLB, and NBA.

The Bills Mafia is seeing a similar squeeze at the stadium level. Season seats start at a whopping $663, with premium packages easily pushing into the thousands. The Bills Mafia is already calling it a barrier for working-class supporters who now cannot afford to watch their team play.

That is the real edge in John Skipper’s warning. The NFL built its power on broadcast TV, and now it’s selling into a market where the biggest buyers don’t need the league to survive. As for the people who are still paying the bill, they’ll have to make a call when the number on that bill doubles.