OT: Amazon wins rights to stream Thursday Night Football
SIAP. Another development for cord cutters. Amazon has outbid Twitter for streaming Thursday Night Football. Stories like this will likely become more frequent over the next few years. Relevant details:
- Only Amazon Prime members can watch through Amazon
- Included with Amazon Prime membership
- Amazon paid $50,000,000 for the rights
- Also in talks with MLB and NBA, though no definite news there
No. Of course no one will pay $99 to watch 8 Thursday night games.
But this is amazons entire business model. They bundle many "freebies" with their prime membership.
You get Prime Instant video, prime music, free online storage, and now NFL games. All of which provide incremental incentive to bite the bullet and pay the $99 year prime membership.
Now you have free two day shipping, so you buy 5x more stuff on Amazon. Call it whatver you want.. a loss leader, networking effect, eco system whatever. Whatever it takes for them to sign you up as a prime memeber and take advantage of 2 day free shipping they will do it.
Snarky comment forgets variable.
Could you imagine a world where Amazon would obtain a new prime subsciber becasue of this offering????? BTW prime subsribes spend an avg. of $2,500 a year 5x that of non prime subsribers
Shock. REVENUE!!!!!!!!!!
REV - COST = PANTIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Amazon is going to continue to bid on stuff like this since they know Netflix is staying away from sports.
How about this, though...
Twitter paid $10m last year.
Amazon paid $50m this year.
I'll stick with Thursday NCAA games. The NFL is amazingly boring.
Great contribution.
I posted a comment that is relevant to the topic at hand. I feel that I did contribute. I'm sorry you disagree with me that the NFL is amazingly boring.
And the fact your opinion is dead wrong!
My boring what?
You need to tell the vast majority American TV viewers that the NFL is boring. They haven't caught on to this notion yet.
is a garbage product. The games suck because neither team has any time to prepare. It's literally the dumbest idea in sports. I will only watch a Thursday game if my Patriots are playing. I skip every other one because they game is going to be a dog shit taco.
The worst part about Thursday NFL games is that you have to make fantasy lineup decisions before injury reports for Sunday games come out!
Maybe the NFL should consider scheduling the Thursday night games between teams both coming off the bye week. That way they'd get extra rest before and after the game. They wouldn't be able to do that at the beginning and end of the season, but they would also end up with more division rivalry games, since most divisions tend to take byes the same week. I guess they might not want to do that because of the lower ratings, but it might actually improve them.
I haven't seen many people discussing the actual product itself. Thursday night games are basically the worst of the worst.
Sucks for the teams that play Sunday and then have to turn around for Thursday.
Amazon had to pay a pretty penny for these rights and I have no clue how much it will benefit them in the long run. If they are able to somehow stream major games on Sundays then yeah, I'll see the payoff.
But in the here and now? Not seeing it.
Thanks! Appreciate the info and the unnecessary snarky comment.
of you that claim Thursday night games are sub par than the rest, you may be right, but fantrasy guys and gals will check in to watch any game and their numbers are legion!
People are going to watch because its football, but you're right, you're not going to see Packers-Steelers or Giants-Cowboys on Thursday night. You're going to see Jags-Titans or Bills-Bucs.
Jeff Bezos has himself said, "Our goal with Amazon Prime, make no mistake, is to make sure that if you're not a member, you are being irresponsible."
Amazon Prime has, give or take, 66 million members, and growing. The peak for Thursday Night Football, in December 2016, was about 18 million viewers. For most of the season, it was much less. Clearly, Amazon paid the $55M to the NFL because they want to entice football fans to become Prime members; however, their current subscriber base already eclipses NFL viewership.
So, it's a win for both the NFL and Amazon. At $55M, Bezos probably saw it as a fairly cheap way to get it.
If this is anything like their other Prime offerings, only the primary account holder of the Prime membership (the one who is paying for it) will have streaming access. Me, I've got 5 friends and family on my account (who get free 2 day shipping but none of the other benefits). Amazon doen't allow this kind of sharing anymore, but many millions are still grandfathered in. Take that estimated 66 million Prime members and divide it by 3.
Great service if you're a buyer (usually) but horrendous from a seller standpoint. I've had people request returns on my product or ask for refunds and boom..they get it no questions asked, you're out of the money, withdrawn from your account before you can even protest.