Amazon wins streaming rights for Thursday Night Football

[dmix]

I hope Amazon markets this properly. My GF and I both struggled to even find the https://www.primevideo.com/ landing page after we signed up. They have two different interfaces... the amazon.com video section and a seemingly unrelated Prime Video site which was difficult to find on their site. I had to use chrome://history the following day after signing up for the 30-day trial.

Amazon is great at specific UX functionality but not so great at high-level information architecture.

Prime Video has a superior video player to Netflix thanks to the XRay feature which tells you which actors/songs are currently playing/acting during the current scene. I've used it countless times.

Speaking of Xray, for sports it would be great to see which players are currently on the field/court during a game, including which jersey number, and if possible the box score when you hover over the game. That would have been amazing during NCAA March Madness where I didn't know most of the young college players.

The only thing missing from the Amazon player which Netflix has is "skip intro credits" button.

I love this technology/product competition between the two none-the-less.

[hkmurakami]

Xray is powered by IMDB, which Amazon also owns right? Is there an entity they could buy to power such a service for sports?

[syshum]

They have improved this a great deal on the FireTV device where Prime content now has its own "Channel" just like HBO, Showtime, etc so you can separate what is Prime and what is Amazon Instant Video

on the Amazon Main website you have to click "Included with Prime" to get the prime only content

[caseysoftware]

The big reason many people have to not canceling their cable is live sports.

If this is the new trend, it's catastrophic to cable providers.

[donretag]

On the flipside, many have cut the cord because of the high cost of cable, partly due to the cost being inflated by being forced to have channels such as ESPN. Amazon purchasing the rights to sports increases the cost for those that do not care about sports.

[paulcole]

Amazon paid $50M for the worst game of the week.

Unless they're ready to move up 2 orders of magnitude, they're not getting close to the kind of money the NFL is looking for.

[felipemnoa]

If cable dies, then the remaining bandwidth can simply be used for the internet. The writing has been on the wall for a long time so it really should not come as a surprise to the cable companies. As an anecdote, all the people I know that used to have cable now only have an internet connection and get all of their entertainment from there, self included. I know nobody that still has cable.

[taurath]

Half the reason people I know use DIRECTV is to get out of network football games. They've had Sunday ticket on streaming for the past few years but it's like $400 up front and the streaming fucks up. $200 and YouTube live quality and I'll be damn happy.

[m_myers]

Unfortunately, the Amazon TNF package is only for the games that will also be available over the air. NFL Network games will still require cable/satellite.

[bluedino]

Thursday Night Football, along with all the Sunday games, are on broadcast network TV. Only Monday Night Football is on cable (ESPN)

Of course, you can still get a package with DirectTV that lets you view all the games.

[apl002]

i am a die hard sports fan but i've cut the cord. Cable companies have the sketchiest, worst customer service I've ever experienced.

[jonathankoren]

I never understood Twitter's TNF streaming. I couldn't watch it on the phone, and when I tried the website, I saw a small video (no audio) of the game, with live tweets. I was genuinely confused and turned off by the experience. I wanted to watch the game, just like I would have on television, but instead I got this neither fish nor fowl experience, that was the worst of both.

Twitter should have never gotten the contract at all, because they don't have a video client that runs on my television. Facebook doesn't either, and that's why Facebook shouldn't have gotten it either.

Watching video in a browser is lame when I have 55 inch display literally feet away. I want my content there. That's where I watch OTA television, Netflix, and Hulu. If you can't provide it to my television, you've failed. (Yeah, you can hook your computer up to your screen via HDMI, but it's janky as hell, and a horrible experience. It's the 21st century equivalent of taping a magnifying glass to your television and calling it a "big screen" http://www.tvhistory.tv/TV-Magnifying-Lens.JPG)

[dcosson]

I agree, it was odd to try out an internet company but then give it to one that doesn't have a way to stream to TVs/media players. I don't want to watch football on a small monitor, and I'm not so hardcore of a fan that if I'm out I'll be streaming it on my phone somewhere. I'm sure I will watch a few games on the fire tv this year though.

[dalerus]

I really enjoyed Twitter's TNF streaming. I usually watched on my laptop or phone and enjoyed seeing the tweets integrated into the experience.

I really have a hard time with Amazon's prime video player and offering, the UI needs more work. Hopefully this will work internationally like Twitter's version did.

[jpindar]

I was very pleased with Twitter's stream. I'd say it was one of the best quality NFL streams I ever seen. Not in so much terms of resolution per se but in terms of quality - lack of compression artifacts, stuttering and so on. And the audio was fine.

[virusduck]

All the twitter games were simulcast on CBS... Not sure what the point of having them on Twitter was...

[tiff_seattle]

Hopefully they will be broadcasting in 4K. It could be an influential driver of people with 4K TV's to try out Amazon Prime.

[xGrill]

They are actually not producing the games themselves, just the online streaming rights, so I think it will be capped at the 720p the games are usually recorded at.

[paulcole]

I'd bet the has 4K TV and doesn't have Amazon Prime segment to be pretty small.

[seibelj]

I just want to watch local games on my HD antenna. Being locked out of a Patriots MNF game, forcing me to either go to a bar or watch an illegal stream, is simply absurd.

[tkdc926]

The NFL eliminated the "black-out" rule back in 2014. All home games are available on local TV.

[edhebert]

Local games are simulcast over the air.

[chrisan]

You can watch if the game is sold out

[aanm1988]

Why is this absurd? It's expecting you to pay for their product.

[puranjay]

So Amazon seems to be competing pretty hard for my streaming dollars.

I subscribe to Netflix and I buy a HBO Go subscription when GoT comes around (and cancel it right afterwards)

Given the good things I've heard about a few of Amazon's shows (the Man in the High Castle for instance), I'm tempted to give it a try.

But I'm not going to pay for two streaming services at the same time. I just don't stream enough to make it a feasible choice.

I reckon this is a good problem to have. Lower costs for me, and higher content quality

[qqg3]

Amazon is the better deal if you only go for one, their content library has gotten better and better.

Also, consider the other perks you get with Amazon, shipping, music, books etc

[thesehands]

No question they have the infrastructure to do this well. I was impressed with the quality that Yahoo managed when they streamed some live games last season - perfect clarity with zero buffering and very little choppiness to the stream that some other providers don't always manage.

[tootie]

I use Prime video extensively and it works great, but I've not seen them attempt a live stream. I actually don't know how big a technical challenge it is compared to static streaming.

[sremani]

YouTube is my overwhelming choice, you want to be on a platform that is in some form substituting TV. Twitter, FBLive, Amazon, AppleTV, XboxLive etc. are all nice but are sideshows.

YouTube and Netflix are the only two real games in town, but YouTube is the overwhelming front-runner.

[douche]

Thursday games are usually the worst, so I'm not sure what kind of a coup this is. Really, the NFL needs to bag the whole idea of Thursday games

[kbouck]

Agreed. TNF doesn't allow teams enough time for preparation and physical recovery from the previous week's game. Especially when the previous game takes place on Sunday or Monday night.

The Redskins had a stretch this past season where they had to play MNF on 11/21, and then TNF on 11/24 -- only 2 full days in between. That scheduling was absurd.

[amelius]

When will VR sports streaming become a thing?

I want to watch a match virtually from within the stadium.

[dmix]

NBA already has this... http://nbavr.ca/

Reviews were mixed, I've read that it's a great experience and has huge potential, but there is a lot to be desired with the camera positions. There are two(?) cameras, one located at the middle of the court, courtside, and one right below the net. So you can see dunks right above you.

[Touche]

Steve Ballmer talked about this recently on a podcast, and said that they are working on it. It would allow you to buy a "virtual ticket" for any seat in the building.

I think it's a pretty great idea for fans who live far away from their favorite teams.

[sumoboy]

Only need to signup 500k people to break even.

[Neliquat]

So cable and all its burdens is just followimg the cordcutters. Please amazon, let the sportsball fools pay their own way. I cut cable partly to avoid paying the sports tax.

[syshum]

>Amazon has wanted to put sports rights on its Amazon Prime video service,

Amazon wants me to cancel my Prime Video Service....

I would have rather gotten Season 3-n of Alpha House than Football or any other sports.. If they start investing in sports over premium content they can count me out...

I have been a prime member almost from the beginning of prime, I own 6 fireTV devices, and a few Kindle's, I am deep in the Amazon eco system, I will rip them all out over sports..

I dropped cable TV originally because I grew tried of most of my payment going to subsidize sports, and having my channels interrupted with "Live Sports"

[Godel_unicode]

So if they pocketed the $50 million or did share buybacks or similar you'd be ok, but you have an ideological problem with sports and will cancel over them?

[andrewguenther]

That's funny, because if they had made another season of Alpha House instead of getting Thursday Night Football, I would have cancelled my Prime subscription. It all evens out in the end I guess.

[plandis]

Where did it say they were transferring funding from Alpha House to ThNF?

[ams6110]

Why does it have to be either/or?

[kombucha2]

Clearly not everyone agrees with you but honestly I'm in the same boat.