A streaming-only Super Bowl won’t happen in Brian Rolapp’s tenure in the NFL, he says. The NFL’s chief media and business officer spoke to Benjamin Strauss of The Washington Post about a variety of topics, including a Super Bowl held behind a streaming paywall. Rolapp doesn’t think technology is quite ready for that yet.
“I don’t think I’ll be working there when that happens,” Rolapp said during the paper’s Futurist Summit via Sportico. “I think we’re a long way off from that. We had 200 million people watch the Super Bowl. I think the Internet could handle that technically, but we’re not quite there yet.”
NFL brass have maintained that broadcast TV is the best way to reach viewers. Commissioner Roger Goodell said during Super Bowl Week that we wouldn’t see a streaming-only Super Bowl in his tenure, either. He says the league is, “committed to broadcast television” because it’s the broadest platform available. Rolapp echoed the commissioner’s statement:
“I think the NFL specifically, but sports in general, is really the reason why people are showing up to linear television,” Rolapp said. “It serves our purposes very well: The vast majority of our games are still on linear television and even the games we stream exclusively, like the Amazon games, are on over-the-air television for free in the local markets of the participating teams.”
In Rolapp’s perspective, streaming is a complimentary service that aims to capture younger fans who may have either ditched cable or never signed up for it at all. However, broadcast TV will be the NFL’s primary residence for at least the next decade.
“We have made our bet for the next seven-to-11 years that linear television will still play a very important role in our distribution, and I don’t think it’s going to zero.”
