The race for NFL streaming rights appears to have lost a major player. Bloomberg’s Scott Soshnick, Sarah Frier and Scott Moritz reported Friday that Facebook, which was considered to be one of the three remaining companies with solid interest just last month and had VP of partnerships Dan Rose (pictured above) confirm their interest publicly, has now apparently decided to pull its bid:
Less than a month after Facebook Inc. confirmed its interest in live-streaming the National Football League next season, the social media giant has withdrawn from the bidding for Thursday games, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions.
While a deal to stream the most-watched American sport on the most-popular social network has obvious appeal, Facebook likes its live videos to be commercial-free and balked at the NFL’s traditional advertising model, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. Early morning London games that come with the deal were also a turn-off, according to the person.
The NFL is still shopping digital rights for its Thursday night games. Verizon Communications Inc., which already streams games to its wireless customers’ smartphones, Yahoo! Inc., which has streamed London games, and Amazon.com Inc. are considered contenders for the rights.
Both Facebook and the NFL declined official comment to Bloomberg, but if this story’s accurate, it’s certainly interesting to see Facebook exit. That may make sense with their larger streaming and Facebook Live strategy, though. Facebook has been hosting plenty of live sports content, including live streams from several MLB teams during spring training, but those streams have focused on behind-the-scenes access, not game broadcasts. As our Jessie Karangu wrote last month, even if Facebook was serious about NFL rights, they probably would have wanted to try some different, social and behind-the-scenes features rather than just simulcast the standard TV broadcast. The NFL’s certainly going to still be a focus for Facebook, but there may be other NFL content that makes more sense for them than an hours-long game broadcast. That fits with what Rose told Variety last month:
Beyond live game broadcasts, Facebook also would be interested in serving up additional content before or after games in the locker room, behind the scenes or on the field itself. “There’s a lot of interesting things we can do with sports,” Rose said. He added, “If you think about how people engage on Facebook today, it’s not really around watching three hours of video.”
The remaining contenders are also notable. The unsurprising ones in the Bloomberg story are Amazon and Verizon, which were the other two tabbed as finalists last month, but Yahoo is also mentioned. Yahoo streamed a regular-season game from London last year, but was reported to have cooled on the idea last month. Maybe things changed there, or maybe the NFL’s desired money target here has gone down. Still, the exit of Facebook is probably bad news for the NFL, at least from the sense of having a bidding war and making the most money possible off these rights. It will be interesting to watch and see where this goes, but Facebook’s departure from the race suggests the market for NFL streaming rights might not be as hot as some initially speculated.
[Bloomberg]
Comments are closed.