AMAZON CONSIDERS $1 BILLION NFL STREAMING OFFER

The NFL and Amazon are currently discussing the possibility of the streamer obtaining exclusive rights to several of Thursday night's football games. "This is a pretty watershed event for the TV industry,” LightShed analyst Rich Greenfield said on CNBC today. “The fact that now you can get Thursday night games without having any local television — no antenna will work if you’re outside of the home markets.”

The agreement would strenghten and add on to Amazon's three-year deal to braodcast 12 games from 2020,2021 and 2022 seasons its Prime Video. Under the deal, the streaming platform ahs rights to air one exclusive game per season. In a new agreement, Amazon would be responsible for all the production costs and would still need to pay a local broadcaster to produce the game for home markets, as the NFL wants the Thursday night games to be broadcast on local TV in each of the participating teams’ home markets.  This deal projected for 2023, would be its biggest sports rights agreement to date.

Amazon has held streaming rights for Thursday Night Football since 2017 for a reported rights fee of $75 million per season. Those games though have been shared with other NFL television broadcast partners. If Amazon and the NFL make this deal, the agreed-upon Thursday night games would not be available on traditional television except for the local markets of the two teams playing. A similar arrangement is in place for "Monday Night Football" which airs on cable's ESPN.

 The report notes that the deal would bring significantly more games to Amazon, with a source cited as saying this could be twice the current offer. Those matches would be exclusive to Amazon and would mark the NFL’s most significant foray into streaming to date. While a significant figure for Amazon, the US$1 billion deal would be on the lower of $2 billion  paid by ESPN, CBS, Fox, and NBC in their rights deals. The NFL will unveil new rights deals next week, and the agreements with its previously established broadcasters are likely to continue for 11 years. This past year, it was a Week 16 game between the Arizona Cardinals and the San Francisco 49ers. Fox’s Thursday night football deal runs out in 2022 and won’t be bought out early.