As the National Football League begins the first season under an 11-year media rights deal worth nearly $112 billion annually, the league is facilitating a new era of game coverage through the increased application of digital technologies. The move was accentuated by Amazon Prime Video’s transaction with the league, which rendered it the exclusive home of Thursday Night Football following years of simulcasting the games. The NFL, however, had been laying the groundwork to assimilate into the space several years earlier, according to a cover story at The Hollywood Reporter written by Alex Werpin.
Werpin describes how Goodell attended a party at the home of Microsoft founder Bill Gates several years ago and confabulated with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. During the conversation, Goodell expressed how the league could help Amazon bolster its advertising business and emerging Prime Video subscription service. Goodell’s pitch intrigued Bezos, who told him that he had his attention.
The year after Amazon began simulcasting the games, ratings slowly improved and have been on the upswing ever since. In its first year with the exclusive rights to the Thursday night property, Amazon reported an average minute audience (AMA) of 11.3 million viewers, combining internal metrics with data from Nielsen Media Research. This season, Nielsen plans to incorporate the Amazon data, drawing the ire of competitors and sacrificing the trust it garners throughout the industry.
The Thursday night venture on Amazon, however, is proving to be an innovative step serving as a template for the rest of the business. With pay television subscribers down to approximately 60.9 million, according to data from nScreen Media, determining the next step in the evolution of live game dissemination is critical. Amazon will broadcast the inaugural Black Friday NFL game, canvassing the power of its broad business portfolio and personalities to ensure profitability.
“The technology is changing, the platforms are changing [and] the economy is changing,” Goodell said. “We have to be ahead of that strategy at all times so that we are where our fans are, on the platforms they want to be on.”
The NFL itself implemented its pay television channels – NFL Network and NFL RedZone – to its own direct-to-consumer offering. NFL+ gives viewers the ability to access these channels without a traditional cable subscription at a price point ranging from $6.99 to $14.99 per month. Werpin notes that the NFL receives more than $1.2 billion in annual revenue from cable fees, but is putting those at risk due to the augmentation of cord cutting.
NFL Sunday Ticket has also moved away from a traditional cable provider, instead being distributed by YouTube in a seven-year, $14 billion deal with Google. While there have been complaints from those who grew accustomed to DIRECTV, the NFL has engaged in several efforts to grow the appeal of the service by equipping YouTube’s deep roster of creators to promote the service on their channels.
“That’s the power of YouTube that the NFL to their credit recognized, especially for young fans all over the country and, frankly, also all over the world,” YouTube Chief Executive Officer Neal Mohan said. “Creators are going to have access to gameday content – you can imagine them producing content that is shoulder content – so not just what’s on the field but behind the scenes.”
Amazon has helped define the streaming landscape and is serving as an impetus for many other companies either established in live sports broadcasting or looking to penetrate the space. The company assuaged the NFL’s fears when it proved it could handle large audiences with its technologies, underscored by minimal reports of disruptions or outages. Traditional networks are exploring the capabilities of the space, with ESPN planning the launch of a direct-to-consumer product down the road and Peacock airing exclusive NFL games.
