Are you ready for some football? And on your laptop?
The National Football League and Yahoo are partnering to deliver the first-ever live stream of an NFL game to a global audience.
The Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars matchup, which takes place in London on Oct. 25 as part of the league’s International Series, will stream across devices for free. Yahoo properties — including Yahoo, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Screen and Tumblr — globally attract more than one billion monthly users.
“The NFL has always been committed to being at the forefront of media innovation. Through this partnership with Yahoo — one of the world’s most recognizable digital brands — we are taking another important step in that direction as we continue to closely monitor the rapidly evolving digital media landscape,” said Roger Goodell, commissioner of the National Football League.
“We’re thrilled that the NFL has chosen Yahoo for this historic opportunity,” added Marissa Mayer, president and chief executive officer of Yahoo. “It marks a significant change in the way users can access this amazing content. The NFL and Yahoo have both long engaged football fans around the world. Our partnership provides the ultimate football experience — with digital availability, designed for the modern fan.”
Under the partnership, the NFL extends its digital presence by leveraging Yahoo’s global audience, digital advertising capabilities and delivery platforms, which span desktop, mobile, tablet, connected TVs and set-top boxes. The benefits to Yahoo are obvious: no programming is as desirable as NFL games.
Here are the mind-numbing statistics about the popularity of NFL games in America, all per Nielsen: The 2014 NFL regular season reached 202.3 million unique viewers, representing 80 percent of all television homes and 68 percent of potential viewers in the U.S. NFL games accounted for the top 20 and 45 of the 50 most-watched TV shows among all programming last fall.
Plus, five NFL game telecasts this season were watched by at least 29 million viewers, up from just one in the 2013 season. For the third consecutive year, an NFL game was the week’s most-watched TV show in all 17 weeks of the season. In addition, at least two NFL games were the week’s most-watched TV shows in 16 weeks of the season.