- Amazon’s most recent deal with the NFL came with a new caveat in that it was being given one game exclusively to air on its service.
- This week we learned more about that game and that it would come as the middle-offering of a triple-header the day after Christmas, a significant upgrade from past streaming exclusives.
- For Amazon investors, the NFL deal in general represents another element that the company can offer consumers that rivals cannot and at the same time target a demographic of great importance.
- With the NFL’s lucrative TV deals coming due in 2022, viewership data from Amazon will help the league justify boosting its price tag, while also courting additional streaming partners.
For both groups, these deals have never been solely about the numbers these games get now, it is about the audience and their overall behaviors and preferences learned from them.
(Credit: NFL)
Down, set, stream.
While football has always been seen as a big prize to the traditional linear networks, the NFL years ago realized it could make additional revenue with side-streaming deals. Since then we’ve seen a number of big names enter the mix, with Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) being perhaps the most marquee name. This week one aspect of the pair’s recently extended deal came back into the spotlight and serves as a reminder that arguably the most important licenses on TV will soon be back up for grabs.
First as always, some background.
The first streaming NFL game deal was back in 2015 with Yahoo, and since then, it’s been an up-and-down venture in general. To put it kindly, the games being streamed haven’t always been top tier. That 2015 game was between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Buffalo Bills, two teams that for non-NFL fans aren’t known for lighting up the ratings (or the scoreboard, current Bills team excluded).
To make things even more complicated, the game was also one of the match-ups coming from the UK (as part of an exhibition deal) which meant an earlier AM airing. Now for those hardcore NFL fans this was great because basically it meant you had a FULL day of football starting at 10:30am going all the way to the primetime match-up at 8:20 pm (and longer if you count previews and post-game). For the general public, though, unless you were a Bills or Jags fan (or had players from those teams on your fantasy roster), you probably missed it.
