The NFL’s Streaming Deal With Amazon Makes No Sense
Bad Decision by the NFL
The NFL announced that Amazon won the rights to stream 10 Thursday night football games for the 2017 season. The $50 million, one-year deal will allow Amazon to stream the 10 games, also broadcast by NBC and CBS, simultaneously this coming season.
Although this deal makes no sense for either side, it isn’t shocking in the slightest.
Amazon is swimming in money and with live sports being the trendiest new must-have item for large tech companies, they were willing to overpay for NFL rights by spending 500% more than Twitter paid last year.
The NFL owners are a bunch of greedy pigs and after taking a slight pay cut last year to try out something which could have actually been special with Twitter, they went back to their piggish ways and took the offer which put the most money in each owners wallet.
Why the NFL Shouldn’t Have Chosen Amazon
NFL’s decision to partner with Twitter was interesting because it allowed the opportunity to create a new social-first way of watching games. Although the total number of viewers through Twitter wasn’t as substantial as both companies had hoped, the chatroom-like feel added a new game watching experience which had the potential to be something special.
Instead of thinking customer experience first, NFL was more intersted in partnering with a company that had a greater global reach.
Amazon’s streaming adds NOTHING to the game watching experience.
I could see Amazon adding a feature to the stream where you could shop for NFL team-merchandise while watching, but that wouldn’t be a reason for anyone to go out of their way to watch via Amazon.
So why would anyone in the United States watch NFL games on Amazon when the games are streamed free on their television and more imporantly, the Amazon-feed adds no value to them?
Answer: They won’t.
This just means that Amazon and the NFL better bank on this partnership adding fans globally.
The only way to watch the 10 games is with an Amazon Prime account which costs $99/year. This means that Amazon would need to add 500,000 new Prime subscribers globally to recoup their investment.
I don’t see people around the world shelling out $100 for Prime just to watch a couple of random teams play on Thursday night/Friday morning (depending on time zone).
Instead, the better solution would be to create an Amazon-provided NFL global streaming option which allows NFL fans around the world to buy access to individual games, individual teams or a season pass (similar to how they currently operate Prime Video).
NFL Streaming Rights Moving Forward
The good news for both the NFL and Amazon is that this deal is relatively low-risk as its only a 1 year deal. When this partnership ends up being a dud, hopefully the NFL does the best thing for its fans and signs its next streaming deal with the company that makes the most sense for its fans, Facebook.
