In an age of declining ratings and falling subscribers, a bright spot for the TV industry has been live programming.Specifically, live sports.In turn, this has driven up the price of the rights to these programs in a big way.One of the last sports programming blocks up for grabs, the NFL's Thursday Night Football package, was gobbled up by CBS and NBC on Monday for a reported $450 million.This is a massive increase over the reported price ofjust under $300 million CBS paid for the package in 2015.But thedeal for Thursday Night Footballdespite its high ratings and ad revenuemay not actually be worth it, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Benjamin Swinburne."We estimate CBS has lost over $200 millionfrom this contract over the last two seasons (direct ad [revenues] less rights fees and production costs),"Swinburneand his team wrote in a note published Monday before the announcement of the new deal."These losses, for the network or networks that secure the rights, will only balloon, in our viewreaching ~$170 million in 2016 and growing from there."CBS paid around $37.5 million per game to the NFL under its earlier deal; with thenew deal, this comeout to around $45 million a game, which is what Morgan Stanleyhad expected under itsnew assumptions for losses related to this package going forward.CBS and NBC will each air five games this season.Swinburne also argues thatnot only is the Thursday Night Football (TNF) package losing the network money, but that replacing it with a normal primetime show could produce serious savings.Swinburne factored in the average ratings for a CBS show, advertising revenues for CBS on shows with similarratings, licensing and re-transmission revenue, and subtracted the average cost of creating a primetime show."We estimate CBS could take nearly $200 millionin losses [from the current TNFdeal] and (while reducing ad sales) turn them into positive net income," said the note. "Said differently, for the losses to be equivalent to the new TNF package in 2016, the cost against those revenues would have to be ~$230 million or roughly $9-10 millionper hour."Even building a programming block around the football lineup and being able to move more programming to the second half of the year had little to no impact on increasing profitability for CBS, according to the note.Swinburne also broke down the impact on the bottom line for every possiblemedia partner and found that the TNF package would lose every firm money.Of course, the NFL still produces some of the biggest ratings of any televised event and is a coveted property among broadcasters.But at least according to Morgan Stanley's analysis, CBS and NBC willprobably losemoney on this deal.SEE ALSO:PEAK NFL: Investment bank says NFL ratings have peaked and will fallJoin the conversation about this storyNOW WATCH: Bill Nye has a great response to Trump's outrageous statements about climate change
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