Apple is among a clutch of tech companies in negotiations with the National Football League (NFL) for the nonexclusive digital (streaming)
rights to Thursday Night Football, a report from
Variety has revealed. While the NFL has said only that it is in "active discussions with prospective digital partners" on the matter, Verizon's Go90 service, Amazon, Apple, Google, and others are involved in negotiations. CBS and NBC, who have the television rights, will also be able to stream the games in the US.
What the various tech companies are hoping to win, other than Verizon, are the rights to stream the games without requiring a cable subscription login, as well as rights for steaming the games outside the US. Yahoo's recent experiment late last year with worldwide streaming of an NFL game (which cost the company $15 million) attracted some 15.2 million viewers, and opens the potential for growth of the US-centric sport into other markets. The NFL is putting on a set of exhibition games in London later this year, and Apple is also in negotiations
to acquire the rights for those games.
NFL officials have said that they expect negotiations for the rights, which stretches across the next fall's 2016 season as well as the following year's games, to be concluded "in the next several weeks." Apple's interest in the program could signal that it is trying again to achieve a
rumored "skinny bundle" of subscription channels and exclusive content that it would offer to Apple TV users at a low monthly cost, with a focus designed to help buyers "cut the cord" from traditional cable TV providers without losing too much of the content that is difficult to replace online, like local programming and live sports coverage.
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