NFL Overtime

[Omniscient]

@EllisDee

You don’t seem to understand how the television contract is structured. The majority of games (ie: regional games) are on at 1:00pm. When talking about ad revenue, the big money game is the the national game, which is always at 4:15pm. Anything that causes the start of the national game to have fewer viewers is a very bad thing; it’s actually a dealbreaker. That’s why when you’re watching the exciting conclusion of an out-of-market 1:00pm game, they’ll cut away no matter what at 4:15 on the nose.

This is a bad thing, and the league very wisely wants to avoid cutting away from exciting conclusions as much as possible. But their hands are tied by the television contract, which dictates all out-of-market broadcasts be terminated at 4:15 regardless of what’s happening.

Um, you do realize that there’s no God-King mandate that games must take place at 1:00PM and 4:15PM.

It’s correct that there are no ad revenues for overtime games currently, which is the salient point from my comments. A standardized 5 or 8 minute overtime period could have commercial breaks and therefore be profitable unlike the current system.

Were they do do just that then you can rest assured that the networks and NFL will happily adjust their scheduling to ensure there’s enough cushion to accommodate the overtime period.

[EllisDee]

@Omniscient

Um, you do realize that there’s no God-King mandate that games must take place at 1:00PM and 4:15PM.

It’s correct that there are no ad revenues for overtime games currently, which is the salient point from my comments. A standardized 5 or 8 minute overtime period could have commercial breaks and therefore be profitable unlike the current system.

Were they do do just that then you can rest assured that the networks and NFL will happily adjust their scheduling to ensure there’s enough cushion to accommodate the overtime period.

Five minutes is too short to ensure both teams get a possession. The exact scenario you complained about could easily eat up all 5 minutes, leaving it no better than it currently is. Seven minutes could probably do it, but now you’re looking at a significant delay. The networks would probably rather not disrupt their primetime schedules just to accomodate the occasional overtime game.

This overhaul of how the network television contract is structured might make sense if overtime wasn’t so rare. And keep in mind that the contracts are separate for each network, so whatever the percentage of games go to overtime, CBS and FOX could only expect around 44% of that total. What is that, 2% of games? Not really worth disrupting their primetime lineup.

For example, how many overtime games has CBS had so far this season?

Right now, those few games that go to overtime add anywhere from 5 minutes to a half hour, with the occasional outlier pushing 45 minutes. To replace that with an almost guaranteed half hour would be foolish. You’ve got to push the 4:15 games back, which pushing into primetime, and half the time there won’t have been any overtime games anyway so you’re just filling dead air in between games, probably losing viewers in the process.