On Thursday, Amazon will stream its first live NFL game. Getting into the world of sports broadcasting is a big part of Amazon’s attempt to outcompete Netflix. Currently, Netflix controls 40 percent of the streaming market compared to Amazon’s seven.
Amazon has the rights to ten Thursday night football games. While this clearly isn’t all of football, and while sports fans have been able to watch games online through the NFL’s streaming services, opening it up to all Amazon Prime customers is a big change.
Over the last several years, professional sports coverage has been one of the few draws toward paid cable rather than streaming subscription services. Traditional TV subscriptions are projected to decline by at least 1.7 percent per year over the next decade. Around 25 percent of households won’t have a TV subscription by the end of 2017 according to estimates from the Convergence Research Group. Revenues have continued to grow, however, a function of increased prices that many blame for the decreases in subscriptions.
Ratings for professional sports have also been declining, if not so sharply as certain political figures might suggest. In fact, while ratings for the first two weeks of games were down 10-15 percent, largely due to hurricanes, some analysts expect the attention brought by the President’s comments to more than make up for the loss.
Now there’s an argument to be made that the same millennials that are cutting their cables are also the least likely to be particularly interested in watching professional sports, but let’s not forget the NFL is the largest televised sports league in the world, taking in almost half again as much revenue as MLB and more than twice as much as the Premier League. This might be one of the best reasons I’ve seen yet for getting an Amazon Prime account.
Or at least stealing your friend’s.
