Versus To Target Sunday Night Football?

Now that the NFL and Comcast have settled their differences and laid the foundation for a long-term relationship, one of the networks owned by Comcast could be making a play for a chunk of the league’s broadcast package. Scott Pierce of the Deseret News recently reported that Versus might target the Sunday night slate of games that currently airs on NBC. Pierce doesn’t cite any specific source, named or unnamed, for the report. Instead, he says only that there’s “some talk” that Versus might make a play. The current NBC deal expires after the 2011 season. Earlier this week, the NFL announced extensions with CBS and FOX, from 2011 through 2013. Superficially, it makes sense to speculate that the Sunday night package might be in play for 2012. But the reality could be that the NFL and NBC saw no need to include the NBC package within the FOX/CBS/Comcast discussions. New deals became necessary with FOX and CBS in order to permit cable companies to carry the Red Zone Channel, which will feature live look-ins at every Sunday afternoon game. Though the broadcast contracts could be reshuffled a bit as of 2014, our guess is that the NBC deal eventually will be extended to match the other arrangements. And here’s one final point to consider: Versus has a broadcast deal with the UFL, which debuts this fall. Depending on the NFL’s attitude toward the upstart league, the NFL might not want to give credibility to the network that televises the UFL’s games, since that would then give added credibility to the UFL.