Fox outbid everyone to get into the NFL club, but now it’s the partner telling the league to wait. In 1993, Rupert Murdoch called Dallas Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones for help and put $1.6 billion on the table for NFC rights, ripping them from CBS and using that gamble to turn Fox from an upstart into a full-fledged network. But three decades later, the Murdoch family is refusing NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s push to reprice the current deal early.

From Murdoch’s first swing to the current standoff

That 1993 NFC deal did more than bruise CBS’s ego. It triggered affiliation swaps around the country, brought John Madden and Terry Bradshaw into its fold, and helped Fox plant its flag in major markets like Dallas and San Francisco.

NFL Sundays became an integral part of the network’s identity. Rupert Murdoch built an empire on the idea that football was worth overpaying for, which is why the current situation is a major talking point.

The NFL media package across all partners is at more than $110 billion currently. Out of this, Fox pays about $2.25 billion each year for its NFC Sunday window under the 11-year deal signed in 2021. However, Goodell has been pushing to reopen the negotiation before the league’s opt-out window, targeting a new set of long-term rights agreements by the start of the 2026 season.

From the league’s POV, the demand leans on momentum. The 2025 NFL season delivered its biggest audience since 1989, and Goodell wants to turn that into a richer media rights deal. He’s eyeing roughly $6 billion in additional annual media payout – that’s about a 58% jump on what the current package gives the league every year.

Lachlan Murdoch, CEO and executive chair of Fox, had already answered that earlier this offseason by pointing to the last round of negotiations.

“The prices were renegotiated only three years ago,” Murdoch said. “They went up, I think, over 100% three years ago. We think our current pricing is at market.”

On the latest Fox earnings call this Thursday, August 6th, he went beyond just calling the deal fair. Murdoch told investors that after talks with the NFL this offseason, the network will not engage in domestic rights renegotiations until it has to.

“We’ll be ready to engage with the NFL on the opt-out seasons and beyond at a day closer to the 2030 season, which has been the customary timetable,” Murdoch told investors. “Obviously, we have been talking with them over the last period about the future of our rights, certainly for the next four years, and then beyond the opt-out period. But we feel we continue to have a great relationship with them … We think we can see a clear path forward, certainly through the ‘29 season, and also beyond.”

What Fox actually locked in

Fox can plant its feet here because the 2021 agreement already gave it most of what it wanted. That deal runs for 11 years, keeping Fox as the exclusive home of the NFC Sunday afternoon package through the 2033 season, adding new holiday games, expanding digital rights, and awarding the network four Super Bowls over the life of the contract. Sounds perfect, right?

The problem is that Roger Goodell is trying to lean on a caveat in the contract. The NFL holds a one-time right to terminate the deals for the final four seasons. Since the league wants to seek higher prices, it can end its long-time partnership with Fox in 2030 if a new deal isn’t agreed upon. Lachlan Murdoch sees the 2030 opt-out as the natural point to talk about a new deal. There’s no reason to rip up the contract in 2026, four years early, and there’s no reason to pay more until they have to either.

As for Roger Goodell, he has framed his broader strategy around reach and money at the same time.

“What we focus on is ‘How do we reach the broadest number of people, on every broadcast? How do we make an event out of that?” Goodell told Front Office Sports this offseason. “We select our partners in part for that reason. Economics are obviously part of that, the value that’s created. But at the end of the day, we want partners who are going to broaden our audience.”

The NFL is looking at how the NBA’s new contract – a 160% increase from its previous deal – changed viewer economics. It sees room to close that gap with a richer NFL package for itself. Meanwhile, streaming giants like Amazon, Netflix, and Google (YouTube) can dish out a lot more money than what the legacy networks can ever manage, making the case harder for Murdoch & Co.

From a fan’s perspective, this price surge could cascade into subscription hikes and extra services needed just to follow a single season of our favorite sport. Fox can point to that dynamic when it argues that a price surge – on top of an already massive deal – has ramifications for both the network, as well as the people watching at home.

Fox drawing a line isn’t weakness

The easy read here would be that Fox is getting cold feet about the NFL while streaming giants circle overhead for a bigger piece of the pie. But that ignores how much the network has already committed in 2021, and how sharply the prices have jumped since then. When you’ve just bought into a more than $110 billion system, and the commissioner is talking about adding roughly $6 billion on top of it, waiting until the opt-out window is basic leverage.

And then there’s another layer above all this: Roger Goodell’s own status. Per reports from Front Office Sports this July, the NFL owners could finalize a new extension for the 67-year-old commissioner “in the coming months.” This is a critical move with media rights and a future CBA on the horizon, which means the same person who squeezed the last round of increases will likely be leading this push, too.

If that extension gets done on the league’s timeline, the NFL will have its negotiator locked in for the opt-out decision and whatever comes next. The idea of an 18-game season and more international games are some aspects Goodell has already been flirting with. Fox’s, in contrast, is signaling that it will treat 2030, not 2026, as the real decision point. This doesn’t blow up the league’s plan for bigger checks, but it does make them wonder whether there’s a second Murdoch out there willing to pay tomorrow’s price today.