SBJ Football: Amazon playing the long game with NFL

Jay Marine, Amazon Prime's global head of sports, has three expectations about his company's new NFL exclusivity:

1. If you ever use any Amazon service at all, you’ll know how to watch “Thursday Night Football” by the time the season starts.
   
   
2. If you don’t, word-of-mouth about a great viewing experience or advertising will reach you quickly.
   
   
3. When you do purchase Prime and turn on the game, it will be easy and reliable.

“We’re definitely putting a lot against our marketing, as well as the power of Amazon to build that awareness,” Marine told me. “But you’ve also got the power of the NFL, and people are going to want watch that game, and we’re the only place to go. For some people who haven’t really adopted streaming yet, this will be a change, and we just have to see how that evolves.”

Marine continued: “Our job is to No 1.) Make sure people can’t miss it, and No. 2 making that experience as easy as possible. And that’s something we’ve been working on a long time.”

The ”can’t miss it” is powerful. "TNF" will auto-play inside FireTV and at Amazon.com for Prime members, and will have a dominant position inside all Prime smart TV apps.

Amazon’s exclusive NFL package marks the biggest change in NFL distribution since ESPN’s first cable package in 1987. One poll found that even a majority of frequent NFL viewers don’t know “TNF” is going to Amazon this year. Given that, a viewership drop-off seems unavoidable.

Marine said Amazon and the NFL are aligned on expectations and standards, and won’t sweat the first few weeks. “You’re talking about weeks, and I’m thinking about years in terms of, like, ultimate success,” Marine said. "Not saying it will be years to get a full audience, but more like: ‘What the exact number is in Week One of an 11-year deal?’ -- of course we want it to be the biggest audience possible -- but as I mentioned ... change will take some time, but we’re very comfortable with that.”

Marine, a 20-year veteran who was on the Kindle product team, said Amazon is comfortable launching products while knowing success will require big changes to consumer behavior. Kindle is an example. And Amazon’s core e-commerce business of course lost money for many years before establishing its dominant position.

Postcript: Still no formal update from Marine on how “TNF” streaming will work for bars and restaurants.

Amazon will make every minute of this year’s “TNF" available on demand until the start of the 2023 season in a new feature that went live this week. Prime users will see a button to “record” -- called that because the intention is to mimic the DVR function for linear broadcasts -- but it’s really just opting into access to a VOD library for all TNF content. The library will close at the start of next season.

Amazon execs focused on this feature after initial feedback to their rights deal included a lot of concern about recording games. This is a new feature for Prime sports, which has in the past allowed full replays of Premier League and UEFA Champions League matches for 2 days without opt-in, but nothing close to the scale of this.

The opt-in VOD was part of a demonstration of the "TNF" user experience at Amazon Prime’s Manhattan offices this week. More or less, it looks similar to how "TNF" has shown on Prime for the last three years as part of a non-exclusive simulcast. But there are new bells and whistles designed to take advantage of the streaming platform to add value if fans want it.

Another new "TNF" feature is ability to switch between the main broadcast and alternate feeds (like Dude Perfect) without missing any of the game or losing your place if you’re watching on a delay. And Alexa voice controls will work if you’re watching through the FireTV stick -- i.e., “play the last touchdown” replay order.

Also, the X Ray tab will include replays and live stat feeds.

Amazon is moving cautiously with these features. They don't want them to get in the way, and they know 99% of fans will judge “TNF" initially by two metrics:

1. How easy it is to find.
   
   
2. The quality of the stream and production.

For the first time this year, clubs with international marketing areas can sell their local media rights abroad. But only a handful of deals have been announced as we head into the second week of the preseason. Local TV rights are preseason-only abroad, as they are in the U.S.

The Cowboys, Rams, 49ers, Steelers and Cardinals have struck deals in Mexico, and the Rams have also locked in deals in Australia, New Zealand and China. I’m told more are coming and others may not be formally announced, but the ones we know about for sure represent less than one-third of the 30 possible deals.

In a new market, getting your product to eyeballs would seem to be the first step toward building a fanbase, so I was surprised to not see more. But TV isn’t everything, said Zack Sugarman, the former senior VP/properties at Wasserman who advised some teams on international. "Media rights are a big part of that distribution, but so are social media and influencers and digital ... and those are arguably even more effective in developing fans,” Sugarman said.

The pace underscores just how preliminary most of these efforts abroad are. Teams expect almost no revenue in the early years, and therefore the work can’t compete for precious manpower for more lucrative priorities. "Money talks in this industry,” Sugarman said. "I am not that surprised that we haven’t seen more IHMA related media rights deals knowing they won’t generate a ton of money right now.”

Watch for years 2 and 3.

• NFL Blitz, the cartoonishly violent football video game that took arcades by storm in the 1990s, is making a comeback with NFL Blitz: Legends — created by home arcade company Arcade1Up, in collaboration with the NFL and the Football Greats Alliance, reports SBJ's Hunter Cooke.

• My boss Abe Madkour this week writes about Jed York, who is heading into his 12th season as 49ers CEO. "Both the franchise and its fan base have high expectations for the present -- and the future. There is an air of stability and credibility around the organization, and it points back to York, who freely acknowledges that he’s changed from his days as a 29-year-old first stepping into a leadership role, when he was far more impulsive and impatient."

• The NFL, NFLPA and Dapper Labs are fully launching NFL All Day, an NFT platform for digital video highlights in the style of Dapper’s market-defining NBA Top Shot product, reports SportTechie's Joe Lemire. Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes will serve as the face of the franchise for the 2022 season.

• CAA Football co-head Tory Dandy, an SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree in 2018, negotiated more than $660 million in deals for player clients over the past year, notes SBJ's Liz Mullen. It’s the highest overall offseason total for Dandy in his career. Overall, CAA Football negotiated nearly $1.5 billion in NFL player contracts in the past 12 months.

• Boston-based training apparel brand Nobull has taken sponsorship rights to the NFL Combine, getting both “official combine training partner” and “official on-field supplier of apparel and headwear” designations. Prospects will be required, starting in 2023, to wear Nobull gear during all on- and off-field activities (except for shoes, which remain the athlete’s choice).

• Amazon’s exclusive “Thursday Night Football” games will be Nielsen-rated for the next three seasons, marking the first time that Nielsen’s national TV measurement system will incorporate a streaming service, reports my colleague John Ourand.

• Amazon expects a significant part of each "TNF" game’s viewers to be watching on smaller screens, and that meant coming up with a graphics package that will look good on big screens while still being functional on small ones. Amazon gave SBJ the first look at the new graphics.

• The modern NFL is such a national product that traditional rivalries are now seen as somewhat regional, routine affairs, multiple team execs told SBJ for this week's in depth on the business of rivalries. The most anticipated and best-viewed games are those that combine individual star power and circumstances of national relevance, not necessarily history or proximity. A handful of divisional matchups still evoke feelings of sibling-like resentment -- Bears-Packers, Steelers-Ravens, Cowboys-Eagles -- to name a few. But even in those examples, the teams involved say it’s mostly business as usual for those weeks.

• The Packers are trialing a new robot at training camp in the form of The Seeker, a high-tech machine that launches passes, kicks and punts and can be programmed to change the ball’s location, velocity, distance and arc, reports SportTechie's Andrew Cohen. While the product's manufacturer, MonarcSports, has some college deals, the Packers are the first NFL team to try the machine.