London’s calling. And Google and Apple may be answering.
Reports are stating that the NFL is planning to live-stream its three London games next season and Apple and Google are engaging in discussions to buy the streaming rights.
This would be building off a streaming precedent set by the NFL’s stream of a Jaguars vs. Bills game in London from October of last year. For that game, which Yahoo streamed, the NFL reported the following viewing stats:
- 15.2 million unique viewers (This is just a little less than Thursday Night Football(17.6M) but more than the NFL sees on average for Monday Night Football (13.5M) If it were a TV audience it would have been one of the Top 10 audiences for all programs for the week in the United States)
- 33.6 million video streams
- Over 460 million total minutes of video consumed
- Roughly 33% of audience was international (that’s over 5 million viewers outside the United States)
If either of the two tech giants won the rights then it would be likely to see the London games streamed on Apple’s Apple TV platform or Google’s YouTube.
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A Reuters report says that at this time it is unclear if the NFL wants to sell the three games as a package or individually. The three games scheduled to be played in London are Colts vs. Jaguars on Oct. 2, Giants vs. Rams on Oct. 23, and Redskins vs. Bengals on Oct. 30.
For the Yahoo stream over 185 countries tuned in for the game and 30 brands purchased sponsorship for the event. Which is of course the crucial marker for the entire production.
On paper it certainly makes sense for Apple or Google to get into the media game as more and more traditional television content is going digital and away from cable (Netflix, Hulu, HBO, etc.). And nowadays any live content is extremely valuable. Which makes live NFL content king.