The NFL wants a piece of the streaming action.
In a launch that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell called “an important day in the history of the National Football League,” the network is launching a streaming offering called NFL+ on Monday in hopes of attracting fans to smartphone subscriptions and feature-based tablets. . The first game available on NFL+ will be the Hall of Fame Game on August 4, featuring Jacksonville Jaguars and Las Vegas Raiders.
NFL+ will have two subscription tiers, a $4.99 per month ($39.99 per year) entry level that includes prime-time live local and national games on mobile and off-season preseason games. market on all devices. The service also includes live audio at home, away and at national games for every game of the season and some programming from the NFL library.
The NFL+ Premium tier will cost $9.99 per month ($79.99 per year) and will add full game replays and compressed game replays (since 2009) and training movies, all ad-free.
It will be available on NFL.com and the NFL app and will serve as an additional service for regular users of NFL content.
“I think suggest we configure it together is firm and really attractive the price,” Turkish Yurenka, greater vice president NFL Media General Manager and Los Angeles-based league businesstell him the hollywood reporter. “The streaming and direct-to-consumer space has exploded in the last 3-5 years and clear over the past decade and we believe that expanding our direct-to-consumer product is a smart strategy us and It’s also good for our fans.”
The service gives the league more direct financial exposure to its fan base, with NFL programming being the most popular programming on linear television, and serves as a point of sale for other streaming services such as Amazon Prime Video and Paramount+.
“Passionate and dedicated football fans are the lifeblood of the NFL, and reaching out and engaging with them across multiple platforms is incredibly important to us,” Goodell added in his statement. “We look forward to continuing to grow NFL+ and deepen our relationship with fans of all ages and demographics by giving them access to a wide variety of NFL content, including the media industry’s most valuable content: live NFL games.”
NFL+ builds on the live mobile gaming rights formerly owned by Verizon and Yahoo, which include local and some national games based on the user’s geographic location. Verizon’s rights ended after this year’s Super Bowl.
But the current product is seen as a starting point, says Yurenka, and the league hopes to develop the service over time.
“I think we have a lot of flexibility here because it’s a content offering that we produced in our first year on the market,” says Yurenka. “But as you saw with the others In a straight line As for consumer products, they continue to evolve, either incrementally contents Or a different experience and functionality, and we will do the same.”
The NFL already has an off-market video offering that includes streaming, NFL Sunday Ticket. Those rights are currently on the market, with digital companies like Apple and Amazon among the contenders, along with existing partners like Disney. The NFL Sunday Ticket is available on all devices, including connected TVs and streaming devices, with live NFL+ video and audio on the market that is truly designed for mobile consumption.
“People looking at these phones or tablets are increasing from a unique point of view or an additional consumption point of view, where maybe they were not I couldn’t watch it in front of the TV”, says Yurenka about the justification for the new service.
The league also operated a service called Game Pass, which included streaming of some pre-season games as well as seasonal on-demand games. A league spokesperson confirms that NFL+ will replace the domestic version of Game Pass, but the league will continue to offer the international version of Game Pass.
In fact, Game Pass was something of a starting point for the NFL+, says Yurenka, adding that the league “I looked at what we were doing well there and what we could do better on that front” when it was a new service game.
Major League Baseball and the NBA also have streaming deals that focus on off-market games, with NBA League Pass and MLB.tv, while the NHL has signed a deal to bring its streaming games to the ESPN+ service.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
