Yahoo’s groundbreaking NFL live stream – a free, real-time internet whole game broadcast – was closely watched by league sponsors and in-game advertisers for signs as to whether this was a one-off experiment or the future of sports broadcasting.
The first-of-its-kind event was promoted across multiple platforms both by the league itself via its ‘Wake Up & Watch With The World‘ spot and by online broadcast partner Yahoo with it’s ‘Easy Step-By-Step Guide’ to the first NFL Livestream.
Unsurprisingly, Yahoo’s ‘Buffalo Bills vs the Jacksonville Jaguars’ real-time stream had a few tech teething snags (don’t they always), but more surprising were the impressive viewing statistics that largely met advertisers’ expectations.
The morning after the London-hosted match – just one off the league’s 256 regular season games – Yahoo’s usage data suggested the experiment was a qualified success. Yahoo, which reportedly paid $17m for the free to view ad-funded rights, comfortably beat its audience guarantees by attracting 15.2 million unique viewers. The total streams across all apps and including auto-play was 33.6 million total at an average viewing time of 30 minutes.
In fact, this former number is more than four times the 3.5 million deliveries it had promised advertisers.
The NFL will probably be pleased. Yahoo may not have made money, but it certainly made a splash.
And when compared with traditional NFL TV coverage, it arguably performed pretty well. After all, ESPN’s ‘Monday Night Football’ for the 2015/16 season is averaging 13.5 million live and same-day viewers for each match.
The NFL/Yahoo figures show that 66% of the live stream viewers watched from the USA – that’s 10.1 million domestic unique viewers. Thus offering the live stream advertisers, who paid between $80,000 and $50,000 per 30-second spot, a lot of eyeballs for not that much money. For those paying at the lower end, that rate represents as little as 10% of the cost of a 30-second TV ad for national Sunday NFL games on CBS or Fox.
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This begs the question, despite Yahoo selling out its ad space after dropping its prices, why did most of the NFL’s top sponsors decline to advertise during the NFL’s first ever livestream?
In fact, the only top-10 sponsor to run ads during the stream was Toyota – who bought two 30-second slots and sponsored the halftime show. The car marquee looks to have got a bargain.
The deal has been the subject of intense interest and scrutiny in the sports business and broadcasting community – such as ‘Fortune Debates The NFL/Yahoo Livestream’.
Links:
NFL:
http://www.nfl.com/
Yahoo:
https://www.yahoo.com
