A day after announcing that his company had paid $225 million to split 10 NFL Thursday-night regular-season games with CBS, NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke said that despite the expense, pro football is profitable for NBC.
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"Football is profitable for us now, and it will be profitable for us after this [Thursday Night Football deal]," Burke said Wednesday during Comcast's (NASDAQ: CMCSA) fourth-quarter earnings call with investors.
In addition to the five Thursday-night games it just signed on for, NBCU pays the NFL $1.05 billion a season for its highly rated Sunday Night Football package.
"We now have 24 of the highest rated nights of the year," Burke said. "That's very valuable for a marketer who wants to reach a broad audience. It's really the most powerful programming on television, and we got it at a very fair rate."
Burke's comments came after CBS Corp. CEO Les Moonves told The Wall Street Journal: "I won't lie to you and say it [football is] profitable."
Guggenheim Securities analyst Michael Morris estimates that CBS lost $100 million on its Thursday-night deal this past season.
Moonves claimed the cross-promotional aspects of having the highly rated live programming provided the network with intangible benefits.
Earlier this week, NBCU and CBS agreed to jointly pay the NFL $450 million for 10 regular season games that will also be shown on the NFL Network cable channel. That's a price increase over the $300 million CBS paid to have the rights all to itself this past season.
What's more, the NFL is looking for a digital partner to further share these broadcast rights.
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