Look for the Arena Football League to continue its rights relationship with CBS and ESPN this season.
CBS has carried AFL games on CBS Sports Network since 2013; ESPN since 2014.
No deal has been signed, but the league’s media consultant, Ed Desser, said both networks have indicated they will be on board for the coming season, which starts in April. CBS Sports Network carries 17 regular-season games, including an opening night game and a game of the week mostly on Saturday nights, ESPN2 carries about one game a week, and ESPN3 streams the rest of the games.
AFL Commissioner Scott Butera has been open about his desire to improve the league’s TV ratings by playing in better broadcast windows.
“It’s football in a football-crazy country,” said Desser, a media consultant whom the AFL hired about six months ago. “It’s football at a time when there isn’t a lot of football on TV.”
Desser advised the league to stick with its TV partners rather than follow the allure of digital media companies like Google, Amazon and Yahoo — companies that have deep pockets but have not stepped up for a significant rights deal yet.
“There still are larger audiences available on television,” Desser said. “The approach of having both a television presence on ESPN and CBS Sports Network as well as a digital presence on ESPN3 makes a lot of sense to me.”
— John Ourandbr />
