NFL Opens Up a Bit: To Webcast Sunday Games With NBC; Other Partners Wary

(PaidContent.org)  This story was written by Rafat Ali.

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The National Football League, which has been very protective of its online usage rights, has opened up a bit, and is going to webcast its 17 regular-season games, mostly Sunday night matchups, in conjunction with NBC Sports. NBC, which broadcasts "Sunday Night Football," will make its TV feedincluding Al Michaels' play-by-play and John Madden's commentaryavailable on websites run by both the network (NBCSports.com) and the league (NFL.com), reports LAT It will start with the NFL Kickoff game on Thursday, Sept. 4, between the Washington Redskins and New York Giants.

NBC will sells the ads across the webcasts, and will share the revenues. Viewers will be able to choose from among at least four live camera angles and review stat updates in real time. NFL Network CEO Steve Bornstein called this a one-year experiment to figure out user habits, and any cannibalization effects.

Playoff games and the Super Bowl will not be offered online, nor will the regional games televised by Fox Broadcasting and CBS (NYSE: CBS). These networks together pay the league $3.7 billion a year in fees for exclusive rights to carry its games. Even though it is only 13 games and excludes the 239 other games on CBS, Fox and ESPN (NYSE: DIS), not sure whether these networks would be happy about the exclusion, or if they were approached for a similar experiment.

Last year place-shifting TV provider Sling Media had tied up with *DirecTV* to give the satellite company's users (not SlingBox users) access to NFL games.

WSJ: The NFL owns the online rights for its games but its broadcast TV deals have restricted the league from streaming footage of those games while they are in progress. The NFL approached NBC in recent months to hammer out a deal to stream its games, in part, it says, because NBC's nationwide broadcasts, which averaged 15.9 million viewers last season, make for a clean test of whether online availability will boost or shrink viewership.

SBJ: The league's media partners contacted by SportsBusiness Journal were not happy with the plan, and more than one executive openly wondered why NBC was the only network to benefit from such live streaming. Other network partners were equally surprised and upset by the move, not so much because they wanted to stream the games, but because they felt they deserved to be approached about the concept from the beginning.

For some previous smaller scale effort from NFL on webcasting, see the related links below.


By Rafat Ali