The much anticipated online streaming of NFL games has finally starting to come to fruition. The announcement in recent days from CBS, stating that the broadcast company will air two regular season games and possibly four postseason games for free on devices such as the AppleTV, Chromecast, Roku and Xbox One has echoed throughout communities of fans warmly.
Along with that, comes the new agreement between Yahoo and the NFL to air an October contest between the Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars. The game will be available through several platforms including personal computers, smartphones, smart TVs, and on the company’s website. Although, the game will consist of two small market teams in the Jaguars and Bills, the NFL is likely optimistic this will increase viewership.
The NFL, CBS and Yahoo are using the London games as the primary setting for the free streaming experiment. Also, based on the success of last season’s London contest between the Atlanta Falcons and Detroit Lions and its early 9:30am kickoff, it makes sense why the league would select the Jets-Dolphins and Bills-Jaguars games in October. The Falcons-Lions game saw a 6.6 rating or 7.6 million people which equates to more than twice the number the FOX Pregame Show typically garners showing that there’s an opportunity to lure even more fans.
It is worth noting that FOX Sports did test out a similar concept last season, streaming over 100 NFL games but only for in-market games. Also, with the DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket subscription, each game is available online and they too have continued to expand their market by partnering with AT&T to stream games this season.
However with the announcement from CBS and Yahoo this will mark the first time that games will be provided for free to NFL fans. In years to come we may see even more competition between providers and hopefully accessibility to each Sunday contest for both the casual and passionate NFL fan.