Does A Streaming Service Make Sense For The NFL This Late In The Game?
Among the “Big Four” North American sports leagues, the NFL has long lagged behind in terms of streaming.
Part of that is due to necessity: The NBA, NHL and MLB have multiple games per day for months on end, and those leagues’ national TV deals don’t mean every game airs on national TV. All three leagues launched streaming services or capabilities years ago to connect fans with either their specific team while out-of-market, or access to local broadcasts for all teams.
Where those leagues have not dabbled as much is in shoulder content on streaming. Beyond whatever their specific cable networks (MLB Network, NBA TV, NHL Network) air, the rest has been left to regional sports networks. The NFL has those deals in place too, even if they don’t broadcast games. But given how much demand there is for NFL content year-round, you’d think the league would want to capitalize.
Well, based on a recent report, it seems like the league will be capitalizing on that interest soon, in the form of the tentatively named “NFL+.” There are few details about the potential streaming service so far, beyond the fact that it would allow for mobile game streaming (for customers without cable/satellite) and that it would include games, radio feeds, podcasts and team-specific content.
The live games aspect probably provides the biggest chunk of consumer interest, since it could serve as an extension of a reworked NFL Sunday Ticket (new owner TBD), and/or allow for fans to subscribe to a specific team or teams, much like the NBA and MLB already allow for. Meanwhile, the team-specific shoulder content is the sort of thing that the NFL could succeed with while putting things in one place. Yet it’s unclear if that would mean pulling from the RSN shows and features already in existence, or creating entirely new ones to compete . Since the teams are already paid by those RSNs for rights, it’s questionable whether they’d be able to create competitive content at all, never mind whether there are enough hours in the day for fans to watch both.
If nothing else, though, the NFL creating a streaming home would accomplish two things:
Provide yet another media revenue stream for the NFL’s ever-expanding coffers
Stop fragmentation on the streaming side before it can’t put a cap on it
Around the first note, a potential NFL+ could not only charge consumers for subscriptions, but also take in millions from a partial NFL Media sale, which may or may not include this (potential) new streaming network — as Front Office Sports notes. Netting a few hundred million (at least) for NFL Media rights is already a great financial move, and that’s before considering how partnering with Amazon or Apple on a streaming service also offloads a lot of the infrastructure time and resources to build and maintain said service. And for Amazon or Apple, having “NFL+” as part of its monthly subscription or an add-on would be appealing from a cache standpoint, and further helps evolve how audiences think about those services.
On the fragmentation front, the NFL’s long been the model of revenue sharing — save for the Dallas Cowboys opting out of merchandise sale sharing — but streaming has presented another area where teams could stake out incremental revenue for themselves, without NFL control. The Green Bay Packers already have their own streaming app, as do the Cowboys and some other teams. But there’s a lack of uniformity there in terms of appearance, structure and offerings. Creating an NFL+ service with similar content would seemingly mean those apps are all brought into the fold. Would mention that there’s been no indication that’s the case, but it would seem likely that the league is looking to unify team approaches there, as it does virtually everywhere else for its carefully guarded brand.
So is it too late in the game for the NFL to do this? Honestly, it depends.
Revenue-wise, just creating more ways to make money makes sense. The league’s long excelled at maximizing revenues from media rights, and this would be yet another case of that — especially if it tied into the NFL Media sale. And we already discussed the branding benefits of a unified entry point to team streaming content.
Still, how much demand and/or time is left for consumers? The league already operates on a 365-day news cycle, has turned the NFL Draft into a primetime event, and grabs headlines without much effort on a local and national level. Teams and the league as a whole are already covered ad nauseam both nationally and locally, too.
There’s a benefit to embracing some aspect of streaming as a means of content delivery (and the NFL’s next decade already seems much more focused on that than the last one did). But it’s debatable if there’s true clamoring for a service like an NFL+ when those boxes are already checked in so many other places. If the league can supply that content cheaper and with better quality than competitors, then sure, I guess go for it. But without any other differentiator beyond existing under the NFL banner, it’s tough to see how it really gets enough traction in this crowded streaming marketplace. That probably doesn’t matter as long as it makes money, though. And with the NFL’s name on it, there’s an easy bet that it will.
