2 Things for the next Yahoo-NFL Game

Earlier this year, Yahoo paid a reported $17 million for the rights to broadcast the Bills-Jaguars game in London. The results were mixed, but it was a great test case for us to see how a football game is delivered exclusively online.

Let’s start with the big things: cash and numbers.

Television’s advantage over the internet is its sheer audience, so it’s not surprising that Yahoo was selling ad spots on its game stream for around 200k (although further reports came out and stated that that a spot was going for a lot less as time wore on) compared to the average buy of 500k for a breath of network air.

As for numbers, Yahoo guaranteed 3.5 million streams, and it delivered. On average views, the game racked up about 2.36 million viewers per minute compared to the 9.9 million per minute on television.

Now aside from the money and the audience, Yahoo got a lot of hate regarding the reports of commercial being sold for less than the 200k yahoo initially priced. Given the NFL’s TV contracts going into the early 2020’s however, this is definitely a long-term play for Yahoo, and since it has positioned itself to be at least competent in handling large streaming traffic, it has a ton of opportunity to shape the NFL advertising experience on digital platforms.

Thing no. 1: Exclusive Sponsorship during Quarters

Since the highest ad buys are on Television simply due to its sheer size of audience, advertising on digital platforms proves an advantage than regular commercial spots. Browser and mobile experiences can be modified to fit various ad experiences such as custom browser panes and branded content. On television, a company can sponsor instant replay or a micro segment, but for online broadcasts, a company can put their logo smack dab the function menu for constant exposure.

Thing no. 2: Interactive Interface

While Yahoo tried to beef up its numbers by auto-playing the game to anyone who went to the website, the keystone states are that will be scrutinized will be the number of unique visitors and the time spent per visitor. While networks have tried to integrate digital with football broadcasts, there’s still a lot of friction given the separation between mobile and TV screens. An interactive interface linked with social accounts beefs up user engagement and closes the gap between different screens to provide a seamless broadcast experience.

If you consider money spent on advertising, you’ll see that television isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but the opportunity for internet and digital companies to get into live sports streaming is rising quickly. No doubt the NHL, NBA and MLB paid close attention to this, regardless of the less-than-stellar play.