NFL considers creating a streaming service of its own (NFL+)

[soxhop411]

There is Apple TV Plus, Paramount Plus and Disney Plus, not to mention scores of streaming services without the plus in their monikers. And perhaps coming soon could be the latest entrant, NFL Plus.

The NFL is developing a subscription streaming service that would include games, radio, podcasts and team content. Teams were briefed on the development at the annual NFL owners’ meetings occurring in Palm Beach, Fla.

The NFL has distributed live games for free through mobile devices and on Yahoo for tablets and laptops, but these deals have expired. In the future, it appears if fans on the go want to stream games on their phone and they don’t have a cable subscription, they will need to pay for what is tentatively called NFL Plus.

The brand, NFL +, was included on slides viewed by a meeting of team presidents Sunday at The Breakers, the resort hosting the meetings. The streaming service is nascent, and likely won’t be ready for an owners’ vote until the next meeting in May, said one team president, who requested anonymity because the plans are still developing.

Lee Berke, a sports media consultant, said it makes sense for the NFL to enter the streaming wars, which have sparked a wave of subscription overload among consumers.

“It makes perfect sense that the NFL would be exploring the development of a streaming channel, much like they developed platforms for cable and satellite when each was cutting-edge media technology,” Berke said.

“That noted, any streaming launch could tie into the NFL’s negotiations to potentially sell a portion of NFL Media to a technology partner like Apple or Amazon.”

What would NFL Plus cost? The price on the slides presented to team owners was $5 a month, though a team president cautioned that number is more hypothetical.

https://theathletic.com/3213873/2022/03/28/nfl-considers-creating-a-streaming-service-of-its-own/
More at the link
It will be interesting to see where this goes especially if the price is right and it includes Out of market games

 

[Kliq]

A fake idea the NFL came up with to help create an artificial bidder for their TV rights. If the NFL was a publicly traded company I could see it perhaps taking place because Wall Street likes the idea of streaming services, which is why everyone has one now despite most of them losing huge amounts of money. But the NFL makes an insane amount of money off of their TV deals and would never move any actual games to a streaming platform they ran themselves.

The NFL deal for TNF alone with Amazon is worth $1 billion per year. They would need like, every household in America to be paying a monthly subscription (which they wouldn't because nobody would subscribe from Feb-August) at $5 a pop to even come close to that kind of revenue, and they would be footing all of the broadcasting costs.

 

[Petagine in a Bottle]

I’m skeptical it goes too far; the NFL can make a lot more money selling the rights to their content to other media companies. There’s a reason that the NFL Network doesn’t show many live exclusive games.

 

[edoug]

Whatever I was going to say, Kliq and Petagine already wrote.

 

[Garshaparra]

How would an "NFL+" streaming service differ from NFL Game Pass? That service already streams live games out-of-market, so with a VPN, you can already subvert any local restrictions. RedZone is also pretty much the same, especially when it was a streamable service on consoles (I know people who bought PS4s just to watch RedZone, well before the "apps are everywhere" phenomenon). If they did away with local blackout and allowed streaming of any live game anywhere, I expect their broadcast partners would balk.

 

[OurF'ingCity]

Saw the title of the post and thought the NFL was considering offering the Sunday Ticket package directly, as opposed to going through a third party (DirectTV for now and some host-to-be-named-later starting in 2023, if I understand things correctly). That would make some sense to me as it would be cutting out the middleman. But just a $5-a-month service that just provides basically what you can get through the NFL's app or other apps now (streaming of in-market games only and scattered other "content")? Hard pass.

 

[Captaincoop]

The NFL deal for TNF alone with Amazon is worth $1 billion per year. They would need like, every household in America to be paying a monthly subscription (which they wouldn't because nobody would subscribe from Feb-August) at $5 a pop to even come close to that kind of revenue, and they would be footing all of the broadcasting costs.

So we're assuming they would be airing these games ad-free? How much advertising revenue that currently goes to the networks would come directly to the NFL under this model?

They would not need 300 million subscribers. It's a real idea, and it's close to inevitable over time.

 

[bowiac]

So we're assuming they would be airing these games ad-free? How much advertising revenue that currently goes to the networks would come directly to the NFL under this model?

They would not need 300 million subscribers. It's a real idea, and it's close to inevitable over time.

I don't know if it's inevitable, but there's certainly a lot of appeal to it. I'm not totally up to speed with where ad tech is these days, but the case for this is that a streaming platform is going to have (much) more granular information about who their viewers are, so would be able to serve them more targeted ads than the networks can. If the NFL can monetize ad space better than the networks can, eventually the economics will become overwhelming.

It's going to take a long time to develop the technology around this, but at a high-level, in a world where local networks and cable monopolies are less important distribution, the incentive for something like this become stronger for the league.