BY JAY BUSBEE
The NFL makes its regular-season debut on Amazon Prime tonight with a banger of a matchup: the world-beating Chiefs versus the on-the-rise Chargers. It’s a bold venture into streaming for a league synonymous with broadcast-TV dominance.
The NFL reaps billions from this new deal. Amazon establishes itself as a serious player in the ever-shifting Content Wars. The fans … well, the fans better make sure they have a valid credit card on file, and maybe a teenager around to help them find the dang game in the first place.
Kickoff is slated for 8:15 p.m. Eastern, and right about 8:17 p.m., thousands — maybe hundreds of thousands — of NFL fans are going to realize that “Amazon Prime” isn’t a channel on their cable box. What happens next will determine just how successful this whole streaming-games initiative will be in the short term.
More than 18 months ago, the NFL announced that Amazon would be the exclusive carrier of most Thursday night games in a massive, $13 billion deal that runs through 2033. At a cost of about $1 billion a year, that means Amazon is paying roughly $67 million per game in rights fees. It would require selling a whole lot of dog food and generic home goods to cover that nut … which is why Amazon is hedging its massive bet by aligning with the safest possible entertainment property in America.
Between this and its massive investment in its new “Lord of the Rings” series — by far the most expensive television show ever made — Amazon is pushing all-in on multiple fronts. The streaming service opened the vault to hire Al Michaels, Kirk Herbstreit, Tony Gonzalez, Ryan Fitzpatrick and others.
The NFL is blessing Amazon with more appetizing matchups — Browns-Steelers and Dolphins-Bengals in September, for instance. For each of its 15 games this year, Amazon will run four separate broadcasts: the standard one with Michaels and Herbstreit; a Spanish-language version; a “Prime Vision With Next Gen Stats,” a coaches’-room look at the game; and “TNF with Dude Perfect,” a youth-skewing version with the famous trick-shot loons attempting daredevil feats while commenting on the game.
It’s not your father’s NFL. It’s not even your NFL. It’s your kids’ NFL, and that’s the point.
For any fan with a smart TV and a bit of technical knowledge (and, of course, an Amazon Prime subscription), jumping onto Amazon is no more difficult than getting on any other streaming service like Netflix or Hulu. The challenge will be getting viewers who are more set in their ways — a euphemistic way of saying “older” — to understand 1) Why they’re having to pay more for something they usually get for “free,” and 2) How to get on Amazon Prime at all.
To be blunt, however, today’s older consumers — or, to be more polite, already-avid fans who will follow the league across channels — aren’t the NFL’s target market with the Amazon play. Almost no one under the age of 60 makes any kind of distinction between “broadcast” and cable TV, and almost no one under the age of 25 thinks twice about switching between cable, Netflix, Hulu, Prime, or any of the other dozen streaming services. For that prized young demographic, the logistics of getting onto Amazon aren’t a hurdle at all.
The potential downside of the move to streaming is that the NFL will fracture its own monolithic standing. (For more on this angle of the Amazon/NFL deal, go here.)
There will be a steep learning curve for a lot of NFL fans, but Amazon and the league are banking on love of football outweighing fear of technology and rage at paying another $14.99 a month for another streaming service.
If nothing else, NFL fans can use one of Amazon’s 30-day free Prime trials. That will get you through Washington-Chicago in mid-October, and if you’re willing to watch that, you’re willing to watch anything.
— Follow Jay Busbee on Twitter
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