Yahoo’s big bet on NFL streaming will be put to the test on Sunday morning when the struggling tech giant airs the Buffalo (3-3) vs. Jacksonville (1-5) game live from London.
This is a milestone in the sports streaming world as the first NFL game to be broadcast strictly online and the first time the league has ventured outside of its traditional cable TV partners to air live football.
Unless you live in Jacksonville or Buffalo, you won’t be able to watch the game anywhere but on Yahoo’s platforms. Yahoo will stream the game for free at this link, on its mobile apps, Tumblr, and various TV devices including Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, Sony Opera TV, TiVo, Vizio P-Series, Xbox One, and the Xbox One. Yahoo has specific device instructions here.
This is an important moment for Yahoo, which reportedly paid the NFL $17 million for the rights to stream the game. Though this particular matchup is not all that exciting and airs at 6:30 a.m. PT, Sports Business Daily polled a handful of sports industry folks who said they’ll still be watching closely to see how Yahoo’s streaming technology holds up and how many viewers actually tune in to the online feed.
Reuters reported that the NFL will be “taking a close look at not just how many viewers watch the game, but also what kind of devices they use to watch it, the quality of the viewing experience and whether the game draws a larger share of millennial viewers and how they are using social media to talk about the game.”
Another interesting aspect of this experiment is advertising. More than 30 advertisers will air commercials during Sunday’s stream and Yahoo said it sold out its ad inventory for the game, according to The New York Times, which also noted that ad prices were comparable to traditional cable TV spots.
Though the NFL and other sports leagues still place precedence on their broadcast deals with cable TV giants, this is another sign of the shift toward live-streaming sports action. As their contracts with cable TV companies expire over the next decade, leagues and media giants like ESPN are testing ways to broadcast live action online as more and more people watch sports online, either via their smartphone or with a computer.
ESPN, for example, sold live online video subscriptions for the Cricket World Cup earlier this year and continues to see increasing engagement numbers with its WatchESPN streaming platform — though the service has had its fair share of connectivity issues.
