NFL Streaming

http://adage.com/article/digital/amazon-youtube-twitter-eye-bids-nfl-rights/312396/

I grew up watching football on Sundays with my family. Given we are Green Bay Packers fans living in New Jersey, we were entirely dependent on Direct TV to be able to watch all the games in the comfort of our home. Naturally, we succumbed to paying for it for the entire year to make use of it ~12 weeks a year when the Packers were not on national TV.

Fast forward 15-20 years and streaming is now a thing, as are the distractions and mobility of smart phones. I have the ability to stream the games to my laptop through my family's DirectTV account, but wonder when the day will come that I won't need to pay for the service at all. It seems we are on the track for that. The new generation of NFL watchers want to watch multiple games at once, and watch wherever they are. The NFL is already struggling a bit with the loyalty of their audience, and recognize the need to enable streaming.

Enter competition of Amazon, YouTube, and Twitter to bid on the rights for this streaming. NFL games have historically brought in high levels of television advertising revenue. All of these companies see an opportunity to capitalize on that willingness to pay as advertisers shift their ads to digital for the streaming viewers.

It will be interesting to see the types of ads that are produced for this medium, given the audience will not be as captive when viewing on their smart phone, laptop, or smart TV given all of the other distractions available when the game goes to "commercial".