Amazon renews Thursday Night Football streaming deal for two more years

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http://fortune.com/2017/04/04/amazon-nfl-streaming-thursday-night-football/

Amazon Signs Big NFL Streaming Deal
Reuters

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Photograph by Getty Images

Amazon.com will stream 10 Thursday night games for the National Football League this year, a company spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

Amazon has bought the rights to stream the games for about $50 million and will offer it for free viewing to its Prime subscribers, technology news site Recode reported earlier on Tuesday.

Last year Twitter bought the rights to live stream 10 NFL Thursday night games for a much smaller fee of $10 million.

The deal comes as sports fans are increasingly relying on the internet to watch video at the expense of traditional cable and satellite connections.
 
https://www.recode.net/2017/4/4/151...s-thursday-streaming-watch-live-prime-twitter

BY PETER KAFKA

The rest of the deal is roughly similar to the one Twitter had last year: CBS and NBC will each broadcast five games, and Amazon will stream the networks’ coverage, including their ads. Amazon will have the rights to sell a handful of ad slots per game.

Amazon says it may sell ads for those slots, but says it will also use them to promote the company’s other video offerings.

Amazon won’t have exclusive streaming rights for the games. CBS and NBC will also have the ability to stream the games they broadcast, and Verizon will stream the games to its wireless subscribers.

Last year, when Twitter beat out Amazon for the NFL games, both Twitter and the NFL made a big deal about the fact that Twitter had around 300 million users worldwide. And they said Twitter could reach even more people with NFL games, because it wouldn’t require anyone to log in to Twitter to watch them.

This year, the NFL seems to have made a different calculation. By putting it behind its Amazon Prime paywall, Amazon will reach a smaller potential audience. Amazon has never disclosed its Prime subscriber numbers, but my colleague Jason Del Rey thinks the company has 66 million subscribers; some Wall Street analysts think the number is higher.

It’s unclear what benefit streaming the games actually provides for a digital platform. Last year, both Twitter and the NFL said they were pleased with the results of the experiment, but the games didn’t generate a huge audience: They averaged less than 300,000 viewers per minute, while CBS and NBC averaged 15.8 million viewers.
 
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-X- said:
So it's free as long as you pay for a subscription.
Basically they're going to ramp up their Prime memberships this year.
Good marketing idea.
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I doubt they will. The Prime membership is about free shipping first and foremost. The movie and series addition has just been extra enticement at this point. The main customer's won't be happy if they have to pay more for Prime just to watch 10football games that most already get on Cable or Satelite.

Raising rates would be a PR mess IMO.
 
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Elmgrovegnome said:
The main customer's won't be happy if they have to pay more for Prime just to watch 10football games that most already get on Cable or Satelite.
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Until Cable & Satellite become obsolete.
 
I've had Amazon Prime for a while now, it's money well spent. That and Netflix are the two big web providers my family relies on. Well that and HBO which is paid for out of my cable/internet packaging grr.

Good thing is Amazon has the bandwidth to handle demand too.
 
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I'm streaming everything now. My DirecTV bill had got up to $240.00 per month with the premium channels (Sunday Ticket, HBO, Showtime), so after being with them since they began, I've gone cold turkey from Satellite and now stream HBONow, Netflix & Amazon Prime. My bill is down to about $45.00 per month for both HBONow & Netflix together, and Prime is $100. per year (and worth every cent). Couple months ago HBONow offered a package at $35.00 per month + $5.00 per mo. for HBO itself. My package was guaranteed for a year, then a month later they just went ahead and threw in the HBO channel for free. They even included the Apple TV box for free which allows me to stream everything on the televisions also.
I've pretty much done away with supermarket shopping as AmazonFresh has replaced most of that with delivery right to my door, with cheaper prices.
 
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With Prime people can watch the games on their tv, so that will be nice for those of us who live away from cities and don't have cable tv either.

Besides probably enticing some to subscribe to Prime, it will likely get some who are wavering to keep it, AND get many who have it to try the Prime Video aspect of it. It also wouldn't surprise me if they have a discounted version of it just for the football season. And that would include the all important Christmas gift buying season. It's expensive for Amazon, but I'm sure they expect to make money from it overall.
 
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This is step two. Twitter was step one.

It won't be too long before they are streaming on the NFL's site as pay per view and they will make plenty on it.

Be prepared to pay 10 bucks a week to watch the Rams. It's coming and I've been saying this for years.

The next TV deal may be smaller than the current one because of streaming.
 
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LesBaker said:
This is step two. Twitter was step one.

It won't be too long before they are streaming on the NFL's site as pay per view and they will make plenty on it.

Be prepared to pay 10 bucks a week to watch the Rams. It's coming and I've been saying this for years.

The next TV deal may be smaller than the current one because of streaming.
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Bring it to me now! I'd easily pay 160 bucks to watch a Rams entire season.
 
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LesBaker said:
This is step two. Twitter was step one.

It won't be too long before they are streaming on the NFL's site as pay per view and they will make plenty on it.

Be prepared to pay 10 bucks a week to watch the Rams. It's coming and I've been saying this for years.

The next TV deal may be smaller than the current one because of streaming.
Click to expand...

That's better than paying +$300 for NFL Sunday ticket for out of market fans. Would suck for fans in their respective markets though having to pay for it. But if that means getting less commercials, I'm open for that
 
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yrba1 said:
That's better than paying +$300 for NFL Sunday ticket for out of market fans. Would suck for fans in their respective markets though having to pay for it. But if that means getting less commercials, I'm open for that
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Nobody pays that. They give it away these days.

And it'll be more than that a few years after they start streaming.

They will follow the boxing model, it's the most profitable PPV setup. Different games will have different prices.

Greedypeople.
 
Riverumbbq said:
I'm streaming everything now. My DirecTV bill had got up to $240.00 per month with the premium channels (Sunday Ticket, HBO, Showtime), so after being with them since they began, I've gone cold turkey from Satellite and now stream HBONow, Netflix & Amazon Prime. My bill is down to about $45.00 per month for both HBONow & Netflix together, and Prime is $100. per year (and worth every cent). Couple months ago HBONow offered a package at $35.00 per month + $5.00 per mo. for HBO itself. My package was guaranteed for a year, then a month later they just went ahead and threw in the HBO channel for free. They even included the Apple TV box for free which allows me to stream everything on the televisions also.
I've pretty much done away with supermarket shopping as AmazonFresh has replaced most of that with delivery right to my door, with cheaper prices.
Click to expand...
I may be going down that same road very soon. My Xfinity contact is up in October after two years. Directv from 99 till two years ago. What Internet provider do you use ?
 
Not sure how i feel about this since I dont have amazon prime. Twitter was better because it was free lol.
 
Hey Man said:
I may be going down that same road very soon. My Xfinity contact is up in October after two years. Directv from 99 till two years ago. What Internet provider do you use ?
Click to expand...

AT&T. In fact, when they bought DirecTV, I was able to combine bills for awhile.
 
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