The NFL’s groundbreaking Black Friday match will stream exclusively on Amazon’s Prime Video, marking the league’s first ever game on this shopping-centric holiday. A battle between the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets is set for 3 p.m. ET, offering an exclusive performance by country music icon, Garth Brooks, American singer-songwriter. This non-traditional approach further erodes the dominance of linear TV which is already grappling with dwindling ad revenue and customers cutting the cord.
This marks an expansion of Amazon’s “Thursday Night Football” deal with the NFL, which has resulted in a 6% rise in NFL viewership. With the game airing the day after Thanksgiving, Amazon is expected to capture holiday viewers after previous Black Friday records were shattered. The move to stream sports directly corresponds to the shift away from cable to on-demand content. This continues to underline the drastic changes in consumer behavior and their preferences.
Planning to make the Black Friday game an annual tradition, the NFL and Amazon are gearing up for this anticipative shift as longstanding networks adopt streaming. However, cable-based stalwart ESPN is also considering following suit by offering all programming to streaming audiences. While the streaming trend picks up, sports programming continues to breathe life into traditional TV. Despite the fall in traditional TV, linear TV usage is rising back up, significantly driven by college and professional football’s return.
With the state of streaming sports programming, cable and traditional TV are still alive, at least for now, offering a potential lifeline to the linear TV industry. However, challenges lie ahead for media companies that have not yet made the move to streaming, with the dwindling ad market particularly affecting certain entities.ifikasiNevertheless, the shift towards streaming may alter the entire media industry in ways yet unimagined.
The biggest challenge, said sports media consultant Patrick Crakes, is how or whether media companies will integrate streaming with traditional models to satisfy consumer demands or face obsolence. And Disney CEO Bob Iger recently revealed that ESPN will embrace streaming by 2025. Still, not everyone is convinced that ESPN’s jump into streaming will deal a devastating blow. transformed”The biggest loser of the slowing ad market will be Fox, Macquarie’s Nollen said. (Macquarie Group and its affiliates own a net long of 0.5% or more of the equity securities of Fox Corp.)”. “Other media companies, including NBCUniversal through its Peacock service, have pivoted in large part to streaming ventures, where ad revenue through those platforms can partially offset the slump in linear. The problem with Fox? It doesn’t have a streaming platform beyond its free, ad-supported service Tubi.”
But challenges could lie ahead for media companies that have not yet made the jump to bring their programming to the streaming world.
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ohn Smith is your NFL insider, providing in-depth coverage of football’s biggest league. With a passion for the game and a keen eye for statistics, John delivers game analysis, player profiles, and breaking news to keep readers updated on all things NFL.