NFL Renewal Worries Spur Double Downgrade of Fox Shares by BofA

Joel Leon

Thu, February 26, 2026 at 4:07 AM GMT+9 2 min read

Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) – The National Football League’s grip on US audiences keeps growing and that could spell trouble for Fox Corp. when it comes back to the negotiating table, according to the stock’s lone bear.

Bank of America Corp. double downgraded the Lachlan Murdoch-run Fox to underperform from buy on Wednesday and assigned it a $45 price target, the lowest on Wall Street. The worry is that the traditional media company is too heavily reliant on the NFL and negotiations could slash earnings by roughly 20%.

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“The NFL is by far the most valuable programming that exists today,” analysts led by Jessica Reif Ehrlich wrote. “Regardless of the outcome of the negotiations, we believe the NFL renewal will be an overhang on Fox’s stock price until resolved.”

Fox has trailed entertainment rivals in the streaming wars, instead building its portfolio around live sports and news after selling 21st Century Fox to Walt Disney Co. While Disney and Comcast Corp. could also see their earnings power diminished from NFL renegotiations, their more diverse media empires could help cushion any financial impact, according to BofA.

Fox shares fell 4.3% at 2:07 p.m. in New York. The stock currently has nine buy-equivalent recommendations, 13 holds, with BofA the only sell among analysts tracked by Bloomberg. Shares have fallen 27% since the beginning of the year.

Strong viewership for the league and increasing media rights across major sports have left sports franchises with more negotiating power. Against that backdrop, the NFL is widely expected to begin talks to revise its $110 billion broadcast and streaming deals as soon as few months from now, according to a recent report.

Fox risks being left out in the cold with early negotiations. No programming is more important to the company than NFL on Sundays, Ehrlich said. Losing or diluting its relationship with the NFL would “materially weaken” Fox’s competitive positioning on traditional and digital platforms, she added.

An early repricing on rights fees is “potentially ominous” for the long-term trajectory of traditional media, Ehrlich said.

“The pool of bidders is expanding as deep-pocketed tech platforms seek premium live inventory,” Ehrlich explained. “In that setup, incumbents face a set of unfavorable choices: pay materially more to defend distribution and advertising share, accept ‘pay-more-for-less’ package designs, or risk losing rights altogether.”

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Should Fox lose rights to the NFL altogether, there would long-term repercussions due to the pressure on retransmission and advertising that would follow, according to the analyst.

For now, “the possibility of worst-case scenarios in outstanding renewal discussions will likely continue to pressure the stock,” Ehrlich wrote.

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