There is one person who has the power to stop this NFL and NBC’s Peacock playoff poop

Rupert Murdoch and Jeff Bezos are billionaires, and they would both tell you the best way to build a TV network is through pro football.

None of us should be surprised when the NFL allowed NBC to air the Miami Dolphins at Kansas City Chiefs AFC wildcard playoff game on Saturday night on a streaming platform that will require you to pay money to watch it on TV.

This is a first. This will not be the last.

Unless you live in the Kansas City or Miami area, you will need a subscription to NBC’s Peacock watch this game.

For only $5.99 a month you can watch not only Dolphins at Chiefs, but “stream 80,000+ hours of the best in TV, movies, and sports.” And, you can cancel it at any time (don’t worry, you’ll forget to do it).

There is only one way to even have a chance to stopping this trend from expanding, and it’s basically an umbrella in a typhoon. It’s going to require you to watch something else.

By now all of that money you saved via “cord cutting” is the Easter Bunny; it’s been replaced by a series of subscriptions to platforms that we don’t have enough hours in the day to watch. The price on these “cost-saving” bundles for phones, WiFi and Disney +, Hulu, Apple TV, Prime and the rest has now eclipsed our old cable bills.

NBC is doing this because it paid the NFL $110 million to broadcast this game exclusively on its streaming platform, Peacock. NBC is doing this because the plan works.

This is no different than in 1993 when Rupert Murdoch convinced the NFL, with the help of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, to leave CBS and televise its NFC games on his new network, Fox. At the time the fledgling network really only had “The Simpsons,” but landing the NFL essentially launched Fox in the U.S.

That acquisition changed sports, and American television.

In 2021, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos paid the NFL $11 billion for the league’s Thursday Night games to be aired on the streaming-only Amazon Prime for 11 years. When the NFL adopted its Black Friday game, the day after Thanksgiving, Amazon paid an additional $100 million.

According to Amazon, its NFL first game, in 2022, the platform reported its “biggest three hours for U.S. Prime signups ever.”

The NFL is the only league that can remotely consider a pay-per-view model. Because Peacock is 24/7, and offers a wide array of other programming, Dolphins at Chiefs is not a PPV game, but for a lot it will feel like it.

Boxing adopted the PPV in the mid ‘70s, and multiple generations of sports fans know the only way to watch premiere fights is to fork over $50. Or $60. Maybe $80.

It made those at the top of the boxing pyramid obscene money, but the lack of exposure on broadcast television did incalculable damage that the sport feels to this day. Boxing ain’t dead; boxing is just small.

The challenge for NBC, and the NFL, is to condition the consumer to expect to spend extra money for an event that was previously free.

The challenge for the consumer/fan is to “Just say no.”

On a conference call this week with the media, NFL Executive Vice President of Media Distribution Hans Schroeder tried his best to “language” his way through questions about the outrage at NBC’s decision to air a game that requires a subscription.

“We look at it holistically,” Schroeder said.

(“Holistically” has replaced “synergy” in the corporatey-corporate dictionary. It applies to every potential scenario, and no one really knows what it means).

He continued, “There’s a number of different factors that we incorporate from competitive to fans to partners.”

That’s weird. No mention of money.

“We know and we see the continued evolution in the media landscape, and we want to be where our fans are,” he said of the digital world.

Let me tell you where fans aren’t: Peacock. Because if they were, there would be no outrage.

“Again, we’re very focused and very committed on broadcast. For us, it’s not either/or, it’s both. We want to continue to broaden the distribution for our content,” he said. “That’s the way we think we engage the broadest possible fans, and that’s what the driving strategy is for the majority of our content.”

There is only 0.0023 percent chance this trend stops, because nothing has indicated Americans have the power to not watch a pro football game.

It’s up to you.