The NFL is taking the next step into the future. The NFL has granted Yahoo! the rights to an NFL game. On October 25th, unless you are in Jacksonville or Buffalo, you won’t be able to see the Jaguars and Bills play in London on live TV. Everyone around the world can go and watch a live of the game for free.
Yahoo! is the first web giant, beating out others such as Google, to get rights for ing an NFL game .
Looking at the decision economically, the NFL is not losing any money through the , since the will have ads scattered throughout the Yahoo! reportedly offered an "eight figure sum" for the rights to the game, according to a person close to the negotiations.
The live is able to reach to many more Europeans than the original games did, along with reaching out to the rest of the world. The game starts at 9:30 AM ET, which means it’ll be 1:30 PM in London, England and 9:30 PM in Beijing, China, so the game can be seen by many across Europe and Asia at a reasonable hour than normal games.
Now, how often will we see live ed games? Well, this’ll be the only time you’ll see it this year. NFL Spokesperson Brian McCarthy has dubbed this as an “experiment,” but if all goes well, it is hard to see the NFL not pursue more games to be ed . Will they be the normal 1:00 PM or 4:30 PM games? It is hard to tell, but the international games could very likely see this as their medium of broadcast.
The future of live ed games also could bring in even more revenue for another group of fans. For all of the fans that root for their not in their TV market, they are usually out of luck to watch them, such as a Colts fan that lives in Oregon. The fan is not able to watch his team play because he only has basic cable and cannot view them in his market. Now, if more games were to be ed, then he could watch them every week, which increases his passion and love for the game, but it also brings in more revenue for the NFL since he is watching more games, bringing in more money from advertisements.
The NFL has taken the first step towards a big move for the future of the broadcast of their games. How much longer will it be until the NFL live s more games? We will have to wait and see.