Whether you look at TV viewership, broadcast rights checks, or pure popularity, the NFL is still king of sports television.

But as the streaming era replaces the cable era, Puck reporter John Ourand believes the NFL won’t carry quite the same level of leverage it used. That’s because of how dependent sports networks have become on airing football games and how much streamers aren’t dependent on these deals.

In an appearance on the Marchand Sports Media podcast with Andrew Marchand released Thursday, Ourand detailed his view of how much the NFL is propping up Fox and CBS compared with a streamer like Amazon Prime Video.

“If Fox didn’t have the NFL, FS1 … goes under, almost,” Ourand said. “One of the reasons that Skydance paid so much for Paramount is because they have an NFL deal that extends out another decade. Traditional media companies, their whole existence relies on these sports leagues. Because of that, these leagues have an incredible amount of leverage over them and they can go and get the kind of prices that the NBA got, they can get the kind of prices that the NFL got.”

Skydance Media bid nearly $8 million to merge with Paramount Global this year. Incoming lead executive David Ellison has described big plans around on sports on CBS and the company’s streaming platform, Paramount+.

Looking at the cost-cutting at FS1 over the years, it’s doubtful the network is profitable.

That means the NFL carries significant sway over those networks, who see the league as a life raft. It’s not always true that leagues can extract top dollar off of desperate cable companies, as we saw with the NBA and TNT Sports. But it certainly helps.

On the other hand, Ourand warns that the same won’t be true as the NFL forms longer-term partnerships with Amazon, Netflix and YouTube.

“Having the leagues go after (streaming), they’re going to find that the whole leverage aspect of what they’ve enjoyed for the past several decades is gonna be turned on its head, and that’s where I think that they should be weary,” he said.

Amazon is an e-commerce, logistics, and cloud computing giant. Sports streaming is a tiny fraction of its business. The same is true of YouTube, where user-generated short-form content still drives most of its usage. Netflix became profitable without sports. These companies are in very different situations than the NFL’s partners in traditional media.

The NFL’s saving grace? Being diversified.

By striking deals with just about every sports-viewing platform, the league gives itself a good chance to create a bidding war. It also means the league is less tied to any one broadcast partner.

“What the NFL did recently, and it paid off well for them … everybody has a package,” Ourand added. “Every single one of the TV networks has a package, Amazon has a package, now Netflix has the Christmas Day games, Google/YouTube has the Sunday Ticket. So all of a sudden, there are just enough packages for just enough people that are interested. But it’s like buying a house, the more bidders that you get, the higher the price goes up. And kind of culling that and just creating more of a fervent bidding market could potentially get more money out, I think.”

With Netflix, YouTube, and AppleTV+ still charting their course in live sports and newcomers like Roku still out there, the marketplace is still vast. The NFL has options.

But unlike the past, when the league could effectively name its price and subsidize entire media companies, Ourand believes the NFL will have to get more creative to keep driving up its price in the modern media landscape.

[Marchand Sports Media]