Is This What We Want?: From The Athletic: “The Chiefs-Dolphins game, which is a rematch of a Week 9 contest that Kansas City won, will be the first playoff game in NFL history to air exclusively on a streaming network.”
The NFL is broadcasting a Chiefs playoff game exclusively on Peacock. (Ironically I’m sharing a link from a sports site that is subscription only…so perhaps this is the fate of all media? Oh Boy.)
This is a deep concern for me as the NBA will be negotiating broadcast rights soon. (The league’s 45-day negotiation period with the incumbents, ESPN/ABC and TNT, for the next media rights deal formally begins on March 9. I’m sure there have been casual talks. And if ESPN lost the NBA…what would happen to ESPN??)
A year ago I was in a hookah bar in Vegas and they couldn’t broadest Thursday Night games on Prime Video…a handful of potential customers showed up and when they realized the NFL game wasn’t on; they left.
Does it matter? On January 2nd Prime Video released a media release entitled: Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football Finishes 2023 Season With Record Audience Gains.
So perhaps I’m wrong and this all working?
Streaming is good business for the NFL…I dunno how this is gonna work for bars, fans…all the secondary economies broadcasting sports naturally generates.
Sports especially NFL is a massive mainstream economy. What happens if there’s an astonishing comeback? Something special because it’s the Playoffs and players came to ball? And less than 10 million people saw it?
We’re not going back but how do we move forward?
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Sammy Younan is the affable host of My Summer Lair: think NPR’s Fresh Air meets Kevin Smith: interviews & impressions on Pop Culture.
