NBC punts arena football
Peacock cancels contract with games
What probably doomed the partnership was the anemic household rating for NBC's telecast of the climactic Arena Bowl: a 0.7, 30% lower than the 2005 event. Household rating for the entire 2006 season of nine Arena Football League games on NBC was a 0.9, the lowest average of the four years.
Arena executives maintain that NBC failed to promote the games. Sports reporters on TV and in the print press also have tended to ignore or give scant coverage to the games.
Regional cable networks owned by Fox Sports carry at least five games for each AFL team.
AFL aims to engineer a deal with another national network within the next two weeks. The league's one-year contract with OLN for 12 weekly games has expired, but OLN still could renew for 2007.
AFL is ready to offer a new TV partner carriage rights not only to the games but for multiple media platforms, such as streaming video on the partner's Web site, podcasting, video-on-demand and wireless transmission to cell phones.
The NBC and OLN deals were unusual in that neither network paid the AFL a cash license fee. During all four years of its contract, NBC pocketed the first $10 million in advertising revenues from the games to offset the cost of producing them. The next $3 million in ad dollars flowed into the coffers of the AFL. NBC and the AFL split evenly any revenues beyond the $13 million.
