The NFL is no stranger to signing exclusive licensing deals (see their agreement with the Madden video game franchise), and if a new report from the Sports Business Journal is to be believed, another one could be on the horizon. According to SBJ, the NFL is keeping a close eye on Amazon’s streaming of Premier League soccer games. And if they’re pleased with how things are going, they could be willing to sign an exclusive streaming deal.
At the “Dealmakers in Sports” conference earlier this week, the NFL’s vice president of media Brian Rolapp noted that what Amazon is doing with Premier soccer is “very interesting to watch.” His answer came in response to a question about the growing number of eyeballs for NFL games, and whether technology can handle streaming that many viewers well.
The average NFL game right now gets around 15 million viewers, but big games can top 20 or even 25 million, beyond what most streaming platforms can reliable handle at once. But, he noted, it’s only “a matter of time before technology will allow for NFL games to be streamed.”
This wouldn’t be entirely new territory for Amazon, as they’ve already signed on to stream 11 Thursday Night Football games this season. Those games did require viewers to be an Amazon Prime subscriber, and it almost a certainty that any new deal would require that as well.
