- The NFL’s first-ever Black Friday game will not be shown on traditional television, but on Amazon Prime Video. The Miami Dolphins and New York Jets play at 3:00 p.m. ET.
- The streaming broadcast will include references to Amazon’s Black Friday deals and an exclusive appearance by Garth Brooks.
- So far, sports fans have remained loyal to linear television, but even cable star ESPN is working to offer all of its programming to streaming viewers.
Jacob Kupferman | Getty Images
The Miami Dolphins and New York Jets face off in the National Football League’s first Black Friday game this week – but it won’t be the usual broadcast or cable offering. The game will stream exclusively on Amazon Prime Video.
The NFL’s decision to begin a new Thanksgiving tradition with a streaming platform instead of a broadcast or cable channel is another indicator of the woes of linear or traditional television, which has suffered from declining advertising revenue and customers cutting the cord has.
The Black Friday matchup is an extension of Amazon’s “Thursday Night Football” deal with the NFL, which has resulted in a 6% increase in NFL viewership since last year. And because the game was streamed the day after Thanksgiving, Amazon was able to capture some of the holiday viewership that broke records last year.
“I don’t make ratings predictions,” Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s chief media and business officer, told CNBC’s Julia Boorstin this week. “But I think they’ll be good.” The Black Friday game begins at 3 p.m. ET.
Thanksgiving Day is already a football tradition, with the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys headlining matchups over the years. Fox, CBS and NBC will broadcast games over the holidays.
The NFL and Amazon hope the Black Friday game will become an annual tradition, executives said at a media conference on Tuesday. To boost Amazon’s e-commerce sales, the streaming broadcast will include QR codes at the bottom of the screen that link to some of Amazon’s Black Friday deals. Country music icon Garth Brooks will take the stage in an exclusive postgame concert.
Amazon’s 11-year “Thursday Night Football” deal and YouTube TV’s “NFL Sunday Ticket” package are just a few examples of live sports programming that have made the jump from cable to streaming. In October, Warner Bros. Discovery introduced its Bleacher Report Sports add-on tier to the company’s flagship streaming platform Max, offering subscribers hundreds of live sporting events.
ESPN has long dominated sports programming on traditional television. But that could change if the cable star shifts all of its programming to streaming in a planned direct-to-consumer release.
But even as the streaming trend grows, sports programming is helping keep cable and traditional TV alive for now.
Earlier this year, data firm Nielsen reported that traditional television accounted for less than half of all television usage in July. But linear reappeared in August and September. The jump is largely due to the return of college and professional football, Nielsen said in a report released last month. ESPN also secured the 11 best television shows of September, 10 of which were football-related.
ESPN has weathered the storm of TV declines so far, reporting a “modest increase” in advertising revenue in parent company Disney’s most recent quarterly report, even as the company’s overall TV revenue fell.
Sports programming is holding the linear TV industry together, according to Macquarie analyst Tim Nollen. And ESPN is a big part of that.
But ESPN’s dominance of sports programming could pose a potentially fatal threat to linear television. When ESPN launches its direct-to-consumer service, which would offer much more than its current ESPN+ app, It could be the push sports fans are waiting for to abandon the package altogether.
“If ESPN moves its DTC product online, depending on pricing, this could result in a critical mass of live sports outside of the package to accelerate cord-cutting,” said John Hodulik, media and telecom analyst at UBS. “I think that’s what people are waiting for.”
Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC’s Boorstin on Nov. 8 that Disney will launch a direct-to-consumer flagship ESPN no later than 2025, putting the sports programming world on notice.
But not everyone is convinced that ESPN’s push into streaming will do too much damage, too quickly.
“When you look at the economics that ESPN gets from the pay-TV package, you can’t just walk away and pirouette to DTC and everything stays the same,” said Patrick Crakes, a sports media consultant and former Fox Sports executive. “There is no DTC streaming product that is as scalable as pay TV, even today as pay TV is in decline.”
The future looks more like a reimagined pay-TV bundle, Crakes said, with streaming products included in the bundle’s traditional economics. It’s reminiscent of the recent Disney charter agreement in which Disney+ and ESPN+ are now included in some Spectrum cable packages.
However, challenges could lie ahead for media companies that have not yet taken the step to bring their programming to the streaming world.
A FOX Sports TV cameraman during the Week 5 NFL game between the Atlanta Falcons and the Carolina Panthers at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on October 11, 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia.
David J. Griffin | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images
The biggest loser from the slowing advertising market will be Fox, Macquarie’s Nollen said. (Macquarie Group and its affiliates have a net long position of 0.5% or more of Fox Corp. shares)
Other media companies, including NBCUniversal through its Peacock service, have largely shifted to streaming businesses, where advertising revenue across those platforms can partially offset the decline in linear. The problem with Fox? Apart from the free, ad-supported service Tubi, there is no other streaming platform.
“Fox made the decision to double the package a few years ago, and then they did surprisingly well,” Nollen said. “But if the rip-off accelerates and everyone takes up sports streaming elsewhere, I just don’t understand what Fox is up to.”
When reached for comment, Fox referenced a quote from Fox Corp. CFO Steve Tomsic at Bank of America’s media conference in September.
“I can imagine a world where the ESPNs of the world embrace DTC, but I’m not sure how impactful that will be for us or the entire industry,” he said. “If some kind of sports package emerges that spans different network providers, then Fox will be the first port of call for people who want to package our content with their service, given the strength of our sports offering.”
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.