Amazon, YouTube, Twitter look set to go to battle for NFL live streaming rights
- Monday, February 19th, 2018
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Amazon, YouTube, and Twitter are reportedly lining up bids for the streaming rights to the NFL’s ‘Thursday Night Football’, as TV viewing figures continue to decline and major tech platforms continue to show ever-increasing interest in streaming live sports.
The trio are bidding hundreds of millions of dollars for the rights to stream the Thursday games with the deal set to run as long as five years, according to Bloomberg, citing sources. The NFL will receive help in making a decision from 21st Century Fox, which owns the TV rights to games until 2022.
The NFL is said to want to pen a deal with a company that can offer interactive streaming with social media commentary and statistics to entice kids – something Amazon already does with the NBA’s official minor league, the G League.
Amazon is reported to have issued a bid in the initial round of bidding but is yet to decide if it wants to bid again, following changes to the requests in the NFL’s proposal.
Both Twitter and Amazon have previously had their hands on the rights to the Thursday night games, so could both be in with slightly more of a chance than YouTube. Twitter paid $10m to stream 10 Thursday games in 2016, while Amazon coughed up $50m for the same number of games in 2017.