Former ESPN President Floats Controversial Proposal: Make Super Bowl Pay-Per-View to Increase NFL Revenue

Former ESPN President John Skipper advocated for the NFL to make the Super Bowl a Pay-Per-View event to drive up revenue for the league.

On Monday, Fox reported that 113 million viewers watched Super Bowl LVII between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles, making it the most watched Super Bowl in six years.

On Wednesday, Skipper was on The Big Suey Podcast from Dan Le Batard’s podcast network alongside former Miami Marlins executive David Sampson, and he floated the idea that the league should charge to watch the NFL’s most popular game.

“I assume that there are some number of people that’s the only game they watched the entire year, and they don’t want to be left out. That’s a pretty great place to be for a live event,” Skipper said. “50 percent of the country does not want to be left out.”

“It leads me to a slightly different discussion; if half the country is watching your game and they’re watching it for free, how many of those people would pay a big sum of money to watch the game?” he said.

Podcast host Chris Whittingham asked Skipper if the league would discuss charging viewers to watch the Super Bowl to drive up revenue.

“If you just assume that half of the people watched would still figure out a way to watch if it costs $200-$250 for a household, you’re just going to have more of what David said, bigger parties,” Skipper said.

“I don’t know how many households, I assume it’s half the households who watched; if it was only a quarter of them are willing to pay $20 to have a party at their house, it would still get you into the billions of dollars for a single game, and that is the single best way I can think of for the NFL to increase their annual revenue take for their clubs, is to make the Super Bowl a Pay-Per-View event.”

Watch above via The Big Suey Podcast.