Why I’m steamed at the Chiefs, the NFL, NBC and Peacock; and you should be too | Opinion
“As we celebrate mediocrity, all the boys upstairs want to see / how much you’ll pay for what you used to get for free.”
It was more than 20 years ago that Tom Petty tried to warn us.
But don’t kick yourself if you’re not too familiar with his song “The Last DJ.” It landed a little too close to home for executives in the entertainment industry who decide what we get to see and hear and how much it’s going to cost us, so it never was the hit that it deserved to be.
The latest proof of Petty’s prophecy came Sunday night, with the announcement that Saturday’s NFL playoff game between the Miami Dolphins and “your own Kansas City Chiefs” will only be available on over-the-air television in those two cities.
The rest of the country, including our own colonial outpost of “Chiefs Kingdom,” will only be able to access the game via a paid streaming service, NBC’s Peacock.
I already have a subscription to Peacock, and this still ticks me off.
I’m right there with my good friend and former Eagle colleague Scott Rothschild, who wrote on Facebook: “An NFL playoff game not on network TV. Did I wake up in Russia? This will not stand.”
Sadly though, I have to disagree with the last part of his comment. Not only will this stand, it will only get worse.
I’m dating myself here, but I can remember when folks of ordinary means could afford to go to a Chiefs game once in a while. Now that the stands are filled with corporate execs and other assorted boojies, charging Average Joe to watch on TV is the inevitable next step.
Saturday will be historic in a way, because it’s the first time an NFL playoff game has been yanked off free TV in favor of paid streaming. But it’s a continuation, not the start of a trend.
You already need an Amazon Prime subscription if you want to watch Thursday Night Football, and ESPN to see Monday Night football.
In a way, NBC Peacock having the game is kind of a relief, because you can buy a month of it for $5.99, watch your game and then cancel the service without too much wallet drain.
You might bleed Chiefs red and gold, but the simple fact is the NFL doesn’t care about you, your loyalty to your team or your love of their products. To them, your good will is nothing but an entry on a profit statement, to be exploited for all it’s worth.
Ditto for the TV networks. NBC paid $110 million to exclusively stream a game on Peacock and wants to squeeze every penny it can out of the deal. It’s a decent bet for them. According to the sports-business website Sportico, the NFL accounted for 93 out of the top 100 TV broadcasts of 2023.
The only way to fight back would be to stop watching, but who’s going to do that?
The Chiefs’ primary storyline this year has been the romance between their star tight end Travis Kelce and pop-music megastar Taylor Swift.
I can’t find any statement from the NFL or NBC as to why they picked Chiefs/Dolphins as their Peacock-only game, but I think we can all solve that equation in our heads. Even if every Chiefs fan skipped the game in protest, they’d still make bank off all the Swifties tuning in to watch Swift watch Kelce.
Frankly, the only surprise here is that Peacock’s not offering an alternate stream showing Swift 100% of the time with the game on in the background.
So if you’re one of the legion of football fans disappointed at this latest development, I can’t tell you how to fix it. I don’t think it can be fixed.
About all I can suggest is to remember this the next time the NFL comes with its hand out seeking tax money for a stadium.
Officials on the Missouri side of the state line will be deciding this month whether to put a stadium tax to a public vote in April.
Meanwhile, in Kansas, 80% of our public income from sports betting is being diverted to a special fund to try to lure a pro sports team to this side of the border.
Maybe we ought to spend that on something else.
Last year, the NFL brought in a record $18.6 billion in revenue. Football Commissioner Roger Goodell, who makes $64 million a year himself, has set a revenue target of $25 billion by 2027.
The “boys upstairs” that Tom Petty sang about seem to be doing pretty well for themselves without our help.
This story was originally published January 9, 2024 at 5:15 AM.
