And Away We Go: NFL Wants All Thursday Games To Be Streamed Next Season
from the its-beginning dept
We said the trickle would eventually become a waterfall, and it appears to be happening. As cord-cutting continues unabated, the last strand keeping the cable television cancellation orders from avalanching in has been access to sporting events. But what began a ways back as a couple of leagues experimenting with stream offerings has more recently seen teams and leagues look seriously at the future of broadcast deals and how to wedge internet streaming into them. The king of the professional sports leagues is, of course, the National Football League. You may recall that the NFL experimented earlier this year by offering one of the worst games being played overseas only via streaming on Yahoo's site. Well, while the viewership numbers didn't mirror a television broadcast, pretty much everyone that matters realized that the 2.5 million viewers per minute that Yahoo's stream generated was a big win for the first ever streamed-only NFL game.
But perhaps even I underestimated what a success it was in the NFL's eyes, because I didn't expect them to begin immediately exploring full-streaming broadcast options for every Thursday Night NFL game as early as next season.
The occasionally maligned TNF is still a big moneymaker for everyone involved. CBS is paying $300 million this year, and doesn’t even get to broadcast a full slate. (CBS produces all 16 games, but NFL Network airs the final eight.) The ratings are great, and consistently up from previous years. And yet, Thursday night seems like the place for the NFL to experiment. Unlike all its other long-term TV deals, the NFL has been going year-to-year with TNF, and the bidding for the next contract, just opening now, is for a one-year deal with a league option.What's interesting in this is that whoever is streaming the game would be simply rebroadcasting it over the internet, rather than having to sell separate advertising content. That would be both useful and limiting for the stream-provider. Useful, because it avoids the annoyance of repetitive ads due to low inventory, but limiting in that it limits how the stream-provider can monetize the stream.
But here’s the really interesting part:
The league also sent RFPs to several digital companies, like Google, Yahoo, Apple and Amazon, to stream the entire Thursday night schedule on a non-exclusive basis, sources said. The league’s initial plan would have the digital streams serve as a simulcast of the television production — with the same ads and in-game production features.
But what the NFL's interest in streaming should really do is strike fear in the heart of businesses that have been burying their heads in the sand when it comes to cord-cutting, because wider sports streaming is going to hasten the pace.
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That's the interesting part here, in my mind. Not forcing exclusivity, and the gouging/access problems/piracy encouragement that usually entails seems rather forward-thinking.
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meh
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Efficient Coding.
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Re: Efficient Coding.
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never understood the exclusivity
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Location-based ads
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Re: never understood the exclusivity
Also I don't know about the NFL but other leagues allow the local teams to contract with local stations to broadcast games that are not selected for the national or super-regional broadcasts. I'm old enough to remember when the NBA was only on CBS (then NBC) and local TV, and the local TV rights were restricted to away games. Thus you could count on between 30-40 games per season not being on TV at all.
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From Broadcast Television to Ipad.
There are certain points which can be applied to electronic media. Even if one assumes that everyone has cable television, cable television is not set up for mobility. It insists on everyone being at their assigned place, as defined by the cable company. The classic form of sports-watching with an Ipad will be while doing something else, which requires one to be somewhere else, such as at work. The assumption which cable was operating under was that cable television would be feeding football games-- preferably in high-definition format-- into big-screen televisions in living rooms, so that groups of young men could sit on sofas and drink beer, and cheer noisily. This is all based around the assumption that everyone works nine-to-five. The cable company assumes that there is a certain time of day for children's programming, a certain time of day for stay-at-home housewives programming, a certain time of day for young men's programming, etc.
Well, the economy isn't organized that way, anymore. It is organized on a contingent/temp/graveyard-shift basis. Ipads have taken off because they have a good fit for the way most people, especially young people, live nowadays. An Ipad is for watching sports, somewhere in the world, while you are clerking on a convenience store on the night shift. Depending on your hours, you might wind up following Indian Cricket. Another interesting book is John Bowers, _In the Land of Nyx: Night and Its Inhabitants_, 1984. Bowers develops the notion that night is a frontier. For example, you can often get a job on the graveyard shift when day positions are closed. Or you can go to night school, either because you need to work, or because your credentials aren't good enough to get into day school.
(+) Here is a poem of mine which I think captures some of the distinctiveness of college football.
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Little Girls and Football (*).
Football is conventionally a boy's game/ being rough and tumble/ a way to get hurt/ and among men/ it can be a deadly sport/ but up to a certain age/ girls play football too.
On a morning before a football game/ in the bright sun of a clear, crisp day/ a little golden-blonde girl, no more than four/ tomboyish in a blue windbreaker/ played football with her father, on the edge of a field/ where deer had played the previous night/ She rolled over the ball in somersaults/ and came back to her feet again/ over and over again, enthusiasm unimpaired/ loudly giggling all the while/
Playing like nothing so much as a small bear!
At noon, in the midst of a tailgate party/ a somewhat older girl, raven-haired/ with a face like a fashion model/ played with her three older brothers/ Three older brothers and a father/ to flutter her eyelashes at/ and only one mother to scold her./ When the ball came her way/ she did not strive overly to catch it/ but as it bounced past her/ flung up her hands with a comic expression on her face/ "who, little old me?"
In the dusk, when most of the fuss had died down/ a young man, sturdy, earnest, a future schoolmaster/ gave a lesson in football to the Indian and Pakistani children in the apartments/ half a dozen of them, boys and girls both/ and none of them much over six/ On the picnic benches sat the mothers, watching/ in the flowered silks of Asia, to lend an exotic touch/ The young man explained learnedly of the proper posture/ the better to throw to a backwards-running receiver/ The children listened seriously, chelas of this American guru/ The young man tossed the ball to a little girl, saying/ "throw it back to me so we can see if you have it right"/ For a moment she regarded him/ with a question in her mysterious eyes/ eyes which, in their strangeness, reached back five thousand years/ and then, deciding that "yes, he would do to fall in love with," (**)/ she squared her shoulders in the correct manner/ and-- precisely-- threw the ball back.
2012
(*) Observations in an apartment complex adjoining a university campus, near the stadium, and parking lots used for tail-gating during football games. The events of a Saturday in Fall.
(**) Vide Elizabeth Taylor (1912-1975, the English author, not the actress), _Palladian_ (1946), ch. 4
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