The NFL streamed its wild-card playoff games this January, and the shockwave surrounding the media world was palpable. It was the first time an NFL playoff game required people to sign up, submit personal information, and pay a fee, but it won’t be the last.
The NFL has traditionally hosted playoff games on cable TV channels like ESPN and Nickelodeon, but those games have always been simulcast nationally on over-the-air networks in addition to paid options. (Please note that all games behind a paywall, whether streaming or cable, will be simulcast over-the-air on the team’s home TV market.)
On Monday, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was asked about streaming more playoff games in the future. What matters is not what he said, but what he did not say.
“Our fans are on these platforms. Our fans want access to them,” he told about 150 invited media members. “The technology is amazing. Some of these platforms can do things that linear platforms can’t do. So for us, it’s part of the future. We don’t know where it goes from here. , we will continue to deliver it to our fans where they are, with the best production possible and the best technology possible.”
Instead of Expanding Deploy to these new platforms, exclusively These platforms have completely different animals. What he didn’t mention.
ESPN has long leveraged multiple channels to cover a single sporting event in a megacast format in a variety of ways. The Manning cast was a great way to provide an alternative broadcast to the main broadcast. monday night football Prime Video offers Prime Vision with Next Gen Stats, which packs zoomed-out camera angles and screens with stats and analysis. They didn’t replace traditional broadcasting, but they enhanced it.
Goodell intentionally doesn’t talk about fans. it’s not Who is on these platforms? please do not You can access them. Peacock reportedly paid $110 million to stream the Wild Card game in January for exclusivity. They didn’t want to simulcast it on NBC. (NBC and Peacock are both owned by NBCUniversal.)
Approximately 23 million people watched kansas city chiefs defeat miami dolphins (Although the majority of viewers were on local TV in Kanza City and Miami.) This will be the largest streaming event in history.
Paying for NFL games is not a new phenomenon. Goodell pointed out that 90 percent of the league’s games are televised. Games have previously been broadcast on cable TV’s NFL Network and ESPN, with the streaming service Prime Video being the exclusive home. thursday night football In 2023, Peacock streamed the December games.
Goodell, who turns 65 this month, said the Super Bowl will not move to streaming services in his lifetime, saying the NFL is focused on television broadcasts.
The NFL’s growth has been driven primarily by national television deals. One of the reasons the American Football League was so successful in his 1960s was that it was able to strike a broadcasting deal with ABC, which split revenue equally among all AFL teams. This allowed them to compete financially with the long-standing National Football League. The largest portion of the league’s shared revenue still comes from television contracts.
