In New NFL Deal, Verizon Trades Mobile Exclusivity for Rights on Yahoo

Verizon agreed to pay $2.25B over 5 years to expand its ability to live stream NFL games beyond Verizon mobile phones.

What games can Verizon live stream?
1) In-market
2) National (non-prime time)
3) Pre-season
4) Playoff (including Super Bowl)

DirecTV (NFL Sunday Ticket) still holds the rights to out of market games through the end of the 2022–23 season.

Which properties can Verizon live stream on?
1) Yahoo
2) Yahoo Sports
3) Go90
4) NFL Mobile app

Digital is growing, but still only accounts for 7% of the $7B+ in annual sports rights that the NFL rakes in.

Advertising = goal? Verizon’s previous deal appeared to focus on increasing cell phone subscribers. This deal appears much more focused on selling ads and primarily addressable ads using Verizon’s treasure trove of data.

Small audience = high CPM? We previously attempted to estimate what Amazon would have to charge advertisers to break even on its $50minvestment in streaming rights for ThursdayNight Football.

Keep in mind. The average CPM for NFL football on TV is ≈ $40.

Flashback. Amazon’s NFL audience beat Twitter’s — but is still much smaller than TV

Streaming viewership for first NFL Thursday night game (% of total viewership):
1) 2016 (Twitter): 243K (2.5%)
2) 2017 (Amazon): 372K (1.6%)

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