For the National Football League, the action on the gridiron this Sunday may pale in comparison with what happens online.
That’s because Yahoo will stream a game between the Buffalo Bills and the Jacksonville Jaguars in London live, for free. The webcast from Wembley Stadium will mark the first time an NFL game has aired primarily via the Internet and a milestone in the evolution of online TV.
Yahoo, which reportedly paid $20 million for the rights to the game, will stream a live feed of the game produced by CBS. Other than in Buffalo and Jacksonville, where affiliates of the network will televise the matchup, the game will be available exclusively online.
Why Yahoo is treating the NFL’s first online-only livestream like it’s the Super Bowl https://t.co/dRA3Mz3Fw5
— Nieman Lab (@NiemanLab) October 23, 2015
Roughly 30 companies, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Snickers and Toyota, are slated to advertise during the webcast, which Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has called a “historic opportunity.”
The ability to watch live telecasts of sports typically requires a subscription to pay TV.
Experts say they’ll be watching Yahoo’s webcast to see, among other things, the size of the audience, its age and demographics, and whether viewers watch via mobile devices, TVs or desktops.
Neither the NFL nor Yahoo have said what size audience they anticipate for Sunday’s game. A game between the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins in London on Oct. 4. drew nine million viewers on CBS, compared with the roughly 20 million viewers who tune to network telecasts of NFL games played on Sunday afternoons.
“Broadband and Internet distribution has gotten to a critical place where it can support an NFL game,” Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s executive vice president for media, told Adweek. “One of the reasons we’re there is to see if this could be viable distribution for more than one game.”
“We’ll know a lot more on [Monday],” he added.