Fox has no tension with the NFL, Lachlan Murdoch said on the company’s earnings call, even as the broadcaster added two more games to its rights package on Monday. One of those games will be played in Munich, Germany, next season, a fresh sign that Fox wants to stay deep inside the league’s expanding schedule.
Murdoch said Fox was partners with the NFL for 30 years and was looking forward to being partners for the next 30 years. He said Fox has four years left on its current deal and has had no substantive discussions with the league about renegotiating it. Fox, he added, would like to broaden and deepen the relationship in a disciplined way.
The remarks came as Fox leaned on football to show the strength of its business. The company said more than 170 million viewers tuned into regular season NFL games on Fox during the 2025-26 season, while the NFC Championship game on Fox averaged more than 46 million viewers. Those numbers matter because Fox’s entertainment and news business remains heavily dependent on sports, especially the NFL, to pull in audiences and advertisers.
That dependence is also why the timing matters. Fox inked an 11-year media rights deal in 2023 for Fox Sports, and that agreement is subject to the league’s one-time termination right after the 2029 season. The NFL has become even more central to Fox’s pitch after 21st Century Fox sold most of its assets to Disney in 2019, leaving sports as one of the company’s clearest anchors.
Still, the latest deal chatter is happening against a backdrop of speculation over how hard the league will push in future negotiations. The reported on speculation that Rupert Murdoch was pressuring the NFL and appealing to Trump to influence rights deals. On the call, Lachlan Murdoch tried to shut that down, saying there was no tension and making clear Fox had not been in substantive talks about changing the current arrangement.
The company’s financial picture showed why the league remains so valuable. Fox Corp’s advertising revenue fell to $1.56 billion from $2.04 billion in the comparable quarter last year, underscoring how much the broadcaster needs live sports to stabilize its business. Super Bowl LIX was televised by NBC this year, leaving Fox to lean on its regular-season package and playoff inventory instead of the biggest single game on the calendar.
For now, the answer to the question hanging over Murdoch’s comments is simple: Fox is not fighting the NFL. It is trying to protect a relationship that still drives its business, while quietly preparing for the next round of talks before the current deal runs down.
