NFL’s Amazon deal could be test for more streaming games

Amazon begins its foray into the live broadcast of the NFL games on Thursday night when it broadcasts a confrontation between the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers in their Prime Video service.

This is another option for traditional programming on CBS and NFL Network. Amazon will air 10 games Thursday night and a Christmas party this season, and the success of these shows could determine how quickly the NFL is ready to offer one of its packages exclusively to a broadcast company.


The Thursday night NFL package will be released jointly by CBS, NBC, the NFL Network and Amazon this year, but the 2018 package will be available soon. There could be substantial interest from companies like Twitter, which launched games on Thursday night, Amazon and potentially other technological monsters such as Google, Apple or Facebook.


"I think there will be a real interest from major digital companies and digital platforms in the distribution of NFL games exclusively and more widely in the experience of a game we have done in the past," he said. Hans Schroeder. , the operations manager of NFL Media. "I think we're going to have some interesting options so we can see and I think what we're doing with Amazon this year will be incredibly informative about how we make those decisions."

Amazon is paying $ 50 million for the rights to these games for its core members, a strong $ 10 million increase that Twitter paid last year for 10 games.