Yahoo to Live Stream NFL Games in the Future?

The NFL is making history and will be bringing the game to fans via the Internet. Sunday's big match between the Bills and Jaguars will be delivered live by Yahoo.

CNN Money reports that currently most of the NFL games are only exclusively available on the Internet subscribers who pay for a streaming service. Most of these streaming services act as a supplement to the TV broadcasting service. What separates this service from the rest is the fact that it comes for free. Additionally, there are only two stations that will be broadcasting the game, and they are available in Buffalo and Jacksonville.

The website further reports that streaming services such as this would be more commonplace in the near future. The website also noted that broadcasting networks CBS and Fox already own the rights to most games up to the early 2020s. There will be a whole roster of Thursday NFL games that might be available in the fall, should CBS not hold the rights.

Companies like Yahoo, will most likely grab the opportunity to take the Thursday deal.

"There's a lot of interest across the marketplace," said Hans Schroeder, NFL senior vice president of social strategy.

Tech Crunch reported that a whopping 15 million people had tuned into the first global live stream of the regular season NFL game between the Buffalo Bills and the Jacksonville Jaguars. Yahoo further reported that more than 15.2 million unique viewers had tuned in to the watch the MFL game, which was held at London's Wembley Stadium. According to Yahoo, the figures said that it saw more than 33.6 million streams.

Response to the NFL stream was mostly favorable with viewers reporting mixed experiences with the stream's quality on their Twitter feed. While most viewers said that the stream was of good quality, there were those who reported of "slow loading" and "crashing" at one point. Some users even called the stream "the worst experience" they had. 

"We are incredibly excited by the fact that we took a game that would have been viewed by a relatively limited television audience in the United States and by distributing it digitally were able to attract a global audience of over 15 million viewers," Schroeder said of the figures.

With these figures in mind, NFL has concluded it to be a success and promises to repeat it in the near future.

"All these numbers boil down to one simple fact: Get ready for more streaming NFL games." said the NFL's official website.