“On Monday, the NFL announced the Oct. 25 regular season game between Jacksonville and Buffalo will be put up for bid on national digital platforms. The game is being played in London, meaning the broadcast will begin at 9:30 a.m. ET and 6:30 PT. That’s not exactly prime time for U.S. fans, or broadcast television, but it is ‘prime time’ in China, where the NFL is struggling to gain a toehold,” Aaron Task reports for Yahoo Finance. “Separately, the NFL said it’s going to drop its so-called blackout rule, which prevents local broadcasts of games if they’re not sold out 72 hours before kickoff.”
“NFL media executive Brian Rolapp said the league is ‘testing alternative ways to distribute games,’ The NYT reports, and acknowledged the obvious: ‘The world is changing very quickly,'” Task reports. “The Oct. 25 Buffalo-Jacksonville game will be the first game to be streamed live and potentially opens the door to a new era for the league, and its fans.”
Task reports, “‘It’s a milestone event when one of the premier content providers in the country, if not the world, is willing to offer a game up on streaming only, especially following HBO’s willingness to do an exclusive with Apple,’ says Walt Piecyk, a media analyst at BTIG. ‘It is just one game… but things have to start somewhere. If you have success and get good amount of users it becomes a milestone event for the credibility of streaming media.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Obviously, the cable/satellite barricade is cracking. Let’s hope Apple bursts it wide open!