Yahoo's NFL Deal Presents Huge Potential for the Way We Watch Football

By its very structure, the NFL is a league that forms habits among the viewing audience. Couch grooves are carved out every Sunday, Thursday and Monday from September to December during the regular season, and large quantities of assorted meats are consumed.

Yahoo purchasing the broadcast rights to an NFL game during the 2015 season doesn’t change that fall and winter ritual. Instead, the introduction of a web giant into a fight for football eyeballs has a far more widespread impact.

The company’s lucrative deal for the Buffalo Bills vs. Jacksonville Jaguars game in London on Oct. 25 offers another screen, and an opportunity to blast football coverage throughout the globe. All for a brand new low price: free.

The historic first is a test, and one that seems odd initially for two reasons. They should both be acknowledged in passing, then quickly ignored.

The matchup is admittedly yawn-inducing. The Bills are intriguing after their offseason face-lift, but they’re still not exactly a marquee team with mass viewer appeal. The Pittsburgh Steelers and Dallas Cowboys, for example, always have a massive following regardless of their record. And the Jaguars are still, um, the Jaguars.

There’s also the time hurdle. With the game in London, it will start during groggy Sunday morning hours back in the home of football. Viewers will be rolling out of bed at either 9:30 a.m. ET on the East Coast, or 6:30 a.m. PT on the West Coast.

But cast aside those concerns. This trial run is about the long view, not anything short or singular. It’s also about reaching lands beyond the United States and increasing access to an American-based game.

Yahoo reportedly paid “at least” $10 million for the game, according to Brian Stelter of CNN Money. That substantial figure was settled on after a bidding war also involving Google, Apple and Amazon, per the Sports Business Journal’s John Ourand.

So the digital heavies lobbing around those dollars cared little about the matchup, surely because they’re all eyeing a larger prize. The conclusion is still maybe years away, but Yahoo's deal could be the beginning of an online battle over you, the NFL watcher/couch sitter.

“We have cast our lot with TV through 2022, so obviously we believe in the power of television,” Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s executive vice president of media, told the MMQB.com’s Peter King. “But things are changing, and changing fast, in media.”

Rolapp is referencing the TV network deals in place for the next seven years with Fox, CBS and NBC, all of which come with massive dollars. (CBS is paying an average of about $1 billion annually for the AFC package, according to the Wall Street Journal.) But there’s still Thursday night NFL real estate potentially up for grabs in 2016.

CBS also owns an eight-game chunk of the Thursday Night Football schedule, but only for 2015. The NFL holds an option in 2016, leading to the possibility some TNF games will be open to the highest bidder.

There’s an opportunity in the near future then for swift change. Online streaming services have aggressive interest, and the NFL will be watching its Yahoo experiment closely. If a game between two small-market teams draws even above-average ratings through Yahoo’s roughly 1 billion monthly users, then there’s vast growth potential for free online and mobile access.

That’s significant for a generation of viewers who are progressively cutting cable cords and consuming their entertainment digitally through Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime, to name only a few online streaming providers. Those services require a minimal monthly payment, and the NFL’s experiment with Yahoo comes with only a single, round number.

Yahoo is making broadcast history while possibly setting a precedent for the future, changing how football is beamed into your home, and at what cost. The price of zero is much more affordable than any cable or satellite package and the league’s current pay streaming option. (NFL Game Pass costs upwards of $200 and is not available to those in the United States or Mexico.)

But how far that beaming reaches is even more important to the NFL.

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NFL's Brian Rolapp on Yahoo deal "What's important for us is reach, not by happenstance that this game is in London, primetime in China."

— Julia Boorstin (@JBoorstin) June 3, 2015"

The league’s flirtation with international borders has gone long past the drink-buying stage, and we’re now approaching the ring-buying commitment.

There’s no hiding the push for global interest. In 2014, three games were played in London during one season for the first time. The same three-game slate is scheduled for 2015 and 2016.

More broadly and elsewhere in football, the NCAA has recently held two games in Ireland (2012 and 2014). The international intrigue continues with ongoing negotiations to bring a college bowl game to Australia.

The interest in American football is building beyond, well, America. But increased access is required to take that sense of curiosity and push it further.

International viewers who are developing a thirst for the NFL’s product won’t quibble as much over the matchup and simply want to see football. Meanwhile, access in football’s native land will grow too, along with competition as viewing options evolve.

“We need to prepare for the future,” Rolapp told King. “Have we entered into a new era? Maybe. Maybe not. Obviously TV is still the dominant platform to distribute our games, as it has been for years. But TV is not the only platform anymore, and this is the first time in history we’ve done this with one of our games.”

It may be off in the distance still, but the home NFL audience could eventually have another platform. A free one, and Oct. 25 is the first step.