There's a big battle going on behind the scenes, and the prize for the fight is NFL streaming rights. According to the latest report, the National Football League is shopping digital streaming rights for their Thursday Night Football games.
Supposedly some of the heaviest hitters in the world are negotiating to control these rights. The players in this arena are none other than Verizon, Google, Amazon & Apple (and there may be others). Here's a quote with some additional detail,
"On Monday, the NFL announced two-year TV broadcast deals with CBS and NBC to divvy up the Thursday matches, with each network securing rights to five. CBS for the last two seasons had rights to eight “Thursday Night Football” games.
In announcing the TV deals, the league said it is “in active discussions with prospective digital partners” for global over-the-top streaming rights to the same games.
The NFL didn’t say what companies those were, but multiple sources say Apple, Amazon, Google and Verizon Communications are among the players expected to put in bids for the marquee property. The “Thursday Night Football” digital rights could be sold to more than one distributor, and the league is considering a variety of scenarios, including potentially mixing in games played overseas, according to one source familiar with the talks."
None of these four tech titans would respond with any comments from the media on this subject, which is unsurprising. It will be interesting to see how much these folks are willing to spend of their massive cash reserves in order to secure these NFL streaming rights. Who do you think will win the bid?
Source: Variety
