The creation of a Friday Night Football sporting event to be offered as counter-programming to traditional prime-time viewing on Friday evenings. The Friday Night Football program will not only represent the counter-programming approach for its appeal, but it will also be taking advantage of the successful mirroring strategy by being closely modeled on the already successful Monday Night Football. The show will be available to viewers with the traditional pre-game show starting at 8:30pm and kickoff at 9:00pm. The National Football League will shop the concept to these potential buyers: Disney/ABC; CBS; NBC; FOX; TBS.
The development and creation of a Friday Night Football program to sell to a major network.
Achieving the pricing/sales goal of acquiring a $5 billion, five-year contract.
Achieving/surpassing the average 16.9 rating, 28 share of Monday Night Football programs.
Acquiring corporate sponsorship as an in-built revenue flow guarantee.
Acquiring NFL celebrities to help promote the program.
ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS (Strengths/Weaknesses)
The trends within the Network markets all bode well for Friday Night Football being able to achieve its goals. Early in 1998, Disney/ABC purchased the rights from the NFL to keep Monday Night Football on the ABC network for the next five years at a purchase price of $9.2 billion (Cuprisin 1). Within the same deal Disney’s sister-station, ESPN, gained exclusive rights to Sunday night games which it used to share with TNT. CBS has recently signed a $550 million a year contract which gives it the rights to broadcast American Football Conference (AFC) games for at least five years with an option to extend the contract for an additional three years (Cuprisin 1). Further, Monday Night Football has been a proven winner in ratings and share, in particular with one of the most sought after (and hardest to acquire the loyalties of) viewer groups-men and young males, “They ...