Despite Paywall, Amazon’s NFL debut a success

Despite Paywall, Amazon’s NFL debut a success
4, October 2017 Donnacha Brennan

Sports fans know what they want and when they want to view it, and it is up to broadcasters to meet those expectations, whether they be traditional outlets such as Sky Sports, or new entrants to that market such as Amazon. That is especially the case for younger sports fans who have grown up with on demand entertainment, accompanied by their social media feed. That was the view expressed by Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and an influential tech investor, on an All-Star panel in Beverley Hills yesterday. He was joined on that stage by Jeffrey Blackburn, senior vice president of worldwide business development at Amazon and David Zaslav, CEO of Discovery Communications.

This year, Amazon Prime won the rights to broadcast 10 Thursday Night NFL games to its Prime Video subscribers worldwide, a potential base of more than 80 million people worldwide. Despite a delay to the kickoff due to weather conditions, 372000 viewers watched watched at least 30 seconds of the game between the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears, although Twitter COO Anthony Cruppi disputed those numbers via tweet, saying that the numbers were down on last year for both streams.

An Amazon spokesperson retorted: “As announced by CBS, the correct average minute audience (AMA) on Amazon Prime Video was 372,000, more than 50 percent higher than last year’s streaming partner posted for their first game. In addition, Prime members watched the game for 55 minutes on average, 2.5 times more than last year’s streaming partner.”

If we accept CBS and Amazon’s figures, they show a significant increase on the 243000 viewers who tuned in to Twitter’s first broadcast of TNF last year. While obviously much lower than the televised viewership (14.6m), the increase in viewership is encouraging especially due to the Amazon broadcast being behind their subscriber paywall as opposed to Twitter who made their broadcast free to all.

 

The fact that more viewers chose to watch this year, adds credence to Cuban’s statement. This year’s game featured two division rivals with a massive national and global fanbase. Last year’s game via featured two of the poorer relations in that regard, the Buffalo Bills and the New York Jets. Viewers know what they want to watch, how and where they want to watch it and they vote with their eyeballs. It is up to broadcasters to give them what they want. Using our Fanlink App, clubs can choose to put premium content behind a paywall. Should Amazon viewing figures continue to improve over the course of this season, rights holders should be emboldened by the knowledge that if video/streaming content is strong enough, fans will tune in despite a paywall.

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