NFL May Test-Drive Streaming in ’15 With One Regular Season Game

The National Football League is getting all Kim Kardashian on us. It wants to break the internet. Or at least try to.

As John Ourand reported for Sport’s Business Daily on Monday, the league aims to air one regular season game on the internet in 2015 as a test run. Commissioner Roger Goodell announced his plan during the Super Bowl press conference, and Ourand provides us with some details that have finally emerged.

The game would be carried in both team’s respective markets on television and broadcasted online to the rest of the world. Or, as Ourand’s sources tell him, to anyone outside of the Buffalo and Jacksonville markets, as the NFL is “looking closely” at the October 25 game in London. And if that one isn’t chosen, it’s likely it’ll be one of the other two London games on the schedule.

“That 9:30 a.m. [ET] time slot is interesting internationally when you start to think of parts of Asia, where it reaches into Sunday night, as well as parts of Europe,” NFL senior vice president of media strategy Hans Schroeder told Sports Business Daily. “The one-off, over-the-top game is more of a test to see if digital companies can handle the large audiences that watch NFL games.”

An over-the-top broadcast refers to one which is provided over the internet, or via mobile, directly to the viewer, rather than distributed by a multiple-system operator.

While Ourand lightly speculated in his piece that YouTube, Google or Yahoo could carry the game, there isn’t any sense yet of which digital companies the NFL will talk to. Likely, those three will be involved, as the NFL will perform its due diligence. Whichever company it will be, it will have to be able to prove to the league that it can accommodate millions of viewers at one time from across the globe. Because really, this is what the whole thing is about.

Sure, the NFL sees that the future is in digital. And the present is as good a time as any to lay the ground work for a multi-billion deal with whichever company it eventually strikes an expansive deal with. Streaming games, at no additional costs to fans (if it worked out that way), would go a long way to rebuild a perception that the league has developed over the years as greedy and money-hungry. And more eyes watching more games gives the NFL the leverage it needs when it develops relationships with corporate sponsors and asks for dump trucks full of money for broadcasting rights. But it’s more than that.

The whole thing is about reaching Asia. The National Basketball Association has fantastically marketed itself throughout Asia to the tune of 70 million followers on Sina Weibo and Tencent’s microblog platforms, which are similar to Twitter or Facebook. Conversely, the NFL has fewer than 400,000 followers.

Reuters ran a story prior to the Super Bowl regarding the NFL’s attempt to market globally. In it, the author interviewed a female Chinese student studying business and economics. And she succinctly summed up the NFL’s issue in her country.

“Most Chinese people don’t have the foggiest idea of American football,” Zhao Yaginq said. “Instead, many boys in China are familiar with NBA and European soccer.”

So if you’re peeved that the lone streaming game will start before you wake up from your Saturday night hang over, this isn’t about you. It’s about Zhao and her university buddies and Europe. The NFL already has its claws in you. It wants to reach those that don’t know what a 4-3 defense looks like. And if all goes well for that lucky provider, it won’t break the internet.

Image via Mike Sanchez 





Seth loves baseball and anything with Sriracha in it. Follow him on Twitter @sethkeichline.

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greymstreet
9 years ago

Youtube & Google are the same company.