Streaming platform Amazon Prime Video has named sports betting app DraftKings as its official sponsor for the NFL "Thursday Night Football" livestream and the "TNF Predictions" pregame show. 

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Amazon Prime Video Taps DraftKings as Thursday Night Football Sponsor

and it may be thursday for everyone, but for football fans it's NFL thursday in a major announcement, amazon Prime video has tapped sports betting company Draftkings as a sponsor for the NFL's thursday night Football Michelle, I know you're a big NFL fan, so I'm glad you're here to break this all down for us because I'm not the sportiest, but tonight's game features the Los Angeles chargers versus the Kansas City Chiefs and that will be on Prime video. What benefits are here to provide for draftkings and what can we expect in terms of maybe a bigger demographic starting to do betting because of this move. Well, it's definitely an interesting thursday night football kick off, but it is a divisional game. It's the Los Angeles chargers versus the Kansas City Chiefs, as you pointed out, that's an NFC West division. I know this because I was a Diehard san Diego chargers fan. So this is a game, I'm definitely glad that they're broadcasting because it's out of market for me here in new york. But um it isn't exactly the biggest fan base for the Los Angeles chargers. However, there is an increase in people who are interested in sports betting. So according to Geo comply, check ins for geo locations for sports betting apps increased 71.5% this year's NFL kickoff compared to last year. So there is definitely more interest in sports betting than ever. And with Draftkings providing that in game statistics, it will be good for people who are interested in checking out the amazon Livestream if they're especially into those fantasy football and also um sports betting apps. One thing I will caution against that which has been a complaint in the past with stream games is there's a lag. So some experts I spoke to said that it's between 30 and 60 seconds now. This doesn't seem like a lot. But if you are betting in the moment on those line of those um idiot wagers it can make a huge difference. So I want to see if amazon can fix this issue. They did have some issues with the U. K. Broadcast of the U. S. Open I think earlier this year. So that's something that people are definitely going to keep an eye on. And even if Jack keeps things up to date if it doesn't match the game or if it's a little bit behind from the actual live broadcast that people will see in local markets, this could be bad news. So all eyes are on this game to see if amazon has the technology to work it out. But a. J I know you're not a big sports fan but have you tried sports betting or fantasy football? No, I haven't. But I do think that this deal is a really big one. I'm glad that you pointed out the lag because I think that could potentially spell trouble here. I think it's interesting that Draftkings is hopping on as a sponsor for some of those pre game and also in game features some of that content and I do think it could lead to a wider audience for sports betting, but probably a younger audience, which is essentially what anyone who was watching the live stream on amazon Prime video is probably a part of in terms of demographic, we know amazon selected Nielsen here to measure audiences who will stream the game. So are you expecting to see a huge number of viewers here or will this be a flop? That's kind of my biggest question. So the really interesting thing is the audience hasn't really translated to streaming from television. We are seeing a little bit fewer p People look at the games on average. Um when Amazon spoke to advertisers earlier before they bought Thursday night football, they said they were gonna average about 12.6 million viewers per game this season. That's a lot lower compared to the numbers that we saw from last season. So let's take NBC, for example, they were the big winner of last season's 2021 regular season viewers per game. They came in at 19.3 million. This is a trend that we across that stream games tend to just not have as large of an audience. This is for a couple of reasons one americans are just not used to tuning into amazon or tuning into twitter to watch these games are used to turning on their tv and this kind of harkens back to the 19 nineties when Fox actually entered the NFL streaming, the NFL broadcasting rights and it took a while for the audience to really adopt Fox as a broadcaster, Change the format a little bit, so I think it's gonna be a few years before we see those numbers tick up. However, the NFL isn't really upset, they got a record payout, it's $1.2 billion Thursday night football from Amazon. So either way they get the payday if there's an audience there or not. Um Asia, have you watched a game on a streaming platform? I have not yet, I'm still a part of the traditional camp, anytime I watch, it's typically with family and they're watching on the major networks, but again, I think this is really big and I actually recently had a conversation with eric Jackson, he's a sports business reporter at Sporting Co. And while this can fracture a lot of the audience, I think this is gonna be really, especially when we look at that younger segment at the same time, we know amazon is investing so much money into getting viewers onto their platform, not only with live sports, but also with their Lord of the Rings program, which we know its cost so much money a billion dollars, so they're kind of paying for this and hoping it doesn't fail um but worth noting also Michelle prime video not the only platform that wants to leverage sports betting to boost viewer interaction. So do you think we could see others really jumping into this space? And do you think it's a smart move overall? I can't help but think about that lag that you were discussing in some of the different hurdles they're gonna have to overcome to really make this a success. Well, we definitely know that the really big thing that's going to be coming up right now, and Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, has already said it's going to platform, is that sunday ticket rights, which is the rights to stream games outside of the local markets. And we know that Amazon Google and Apple are betting for those rights and this is going to be a huge multi billion dollar deal as well. So what I would warn about is the fact that it might make, it's gonna make sense for the NFL. They're gonna get a big payday, but you're not gonna get the audience, but you might get people adapting to watching your streaming platform, which is why I think amazon these companies are intuit Apple especially, so if you're not that advertising reliant, and also if you have that diversified um, revenue stream where media isn't your main business, it's going to make sense for you, but someone like netflix buying into these rights where they have to make a lot of money on the people tuning in and just relying on that media revenue. It might not make sense for the payday. Um, I mean, amazon paid twice as much as Fox did for the rights for thursday night football when they did their last deal. So it's definitely pricey to get those games.