With football season kicking off, streaming companies are looking to bid on the rights for high-profile games, with Amazon paying $13 billion to stream Thursday Night games. However, data shows that streaming views are significantly less than cable.

NFL Streaming Wars Kick Off

Okay, well football season is here and there are more ways to watch than ever with streaming services also offering options, you no longer have to tune in just on tv, but what does it mean for viewership for more? I do want to bring in cheddar news, Michele Castelli, Oh Michelle, it's good to see you. So amazon making a $13 billion deal to have 11 years of thursday night football and rumors are apple willing to pay a hefty price to secure the NFL sunday ticket rights, is it worth price tag for these streaming companies? You know, there's a lot of questions about these higher price tags, so I'm glad you brought up amazon, so that works out to about $1.2 billion a season. When Fox had thursday night football, they paid about 660 million according to adam Schefter. So that's quite a bit of an increase. Um you're also looking at because there's so many streaming companies looking to bid on these rights uh direct tv had undated for about 30 years and now google apple amazon are bidding for those rights, you can expect those costs to go up. The thing is for these platforms, it really shows some, it really gives them a way for people to tune in and to learn to use the platform. So there's been some debate whether or not this makes sense, it's highly unlikely that these companies are going to turn a profit because these deals are so big, but if someone like an apple tv plus can get people to get use to using their streaming platform, it's a win win for them, even though they lose some money on the end, it grows one of their products plus you have to remember that companies like amazon google and Apple, they're not really reliant just on media rights to get their entire revenue, they have a lot of different products and they really just need eyeballs or more loyalty with subscribers. So just to take a loss on that, it actually isn't that big of a deal for them. Whereas some other companies where their whole business is media, I'm looking at you like netflix, it might make a little bit more of a painful point for them. Probably why we haven't seen netflix really get into these bidding conversations. We know viewership is lower on the streaming services than it is on traditional tv at least for now. So do you think there's any reason for the NFL to be concerned? Well, I actually think the NFL gets paid out no matter what. So it's a really good news for them if they can get these big paydays and they don't have to work About if the viewership declines because they've got the money. But for comparison, Amazon reportedly, according to the Wall Street Journal, talked to a media buyers and they said they're expecting about 12.6 million viewers per game on Thursday night football this season, this is gonna be the first out of 11 seasons that they have Thursday night football. Let's compare that to 2021 regular season viewers per game. NBC came in at 19.3 million. So there's fewer people who are watching. This is for multiple reasons. I spoke to a Georgetown university professor today and they pointed out that the streaming experience is pretty different from the average television broadcast experience. You're seeing delays of up to 30 to 60 seconds, which fans aren't used to, especially when you look at things like fantasy football and people wanting immediate things. So it's going to have to be a shift in how people watch streaming content, streaming NFL games. Now, this happened back in the 19 nineties, we when Fox bought the rights for the NFL games and they started broadcasting, they changed the format quite a bit. It took a few years of adjustment. But for a company like amazon that bought an 11 year deal, maybe eventually people will adopt the streaming viewership and those numbers will go up. But for the beginning it's going to be a little low, but the NFL doesn't care. They got paid out anyway. Yeah, well, I know the NFL releasing NFL Plus, which is a streaming service. So will it be a real competitor for NFL sunday ticket. It's not really going to be a direct competitor. Um, NFL plus is more NFL game day, you just get some live local games. In addition, NFL sunday ticket is more of those out of market games. That's the big prize that all these tech media companies are bidding for. So these go hand in hand. The NFL is going to be able to retain some of those live rights, get some of that streaming viewership and then you have the big prize for people to bid over. And Apple amazon or google could go to either one of them. Alright, Cheddar News Senior Reporter Michelle castello Michelle, thank you for joining this afternoon.