Was the NFL's streaming experiment on Yahoo! a success or dud?
The first global NFL webcast seemed to go off without a hitch on Sunday morning, as Yahoo! and CBS put together a fine telecast of what turned out to be one of the best games of the NFL season. FTW watched the game, tested the strengths and weaknesses of the broadcast format and compiled this list of the pros and cons for the NFL's grand Internet experiment.
1. Pro: Other than the medium, it was virtually indistinguishable from a CBS production.
Kevin Harlan and Rich Gannon were excellent on the call (as usual -- good move sending a top team) and with CBS graphics and plenty of replays, the whole transition was seamless. This was a CBS telecast available on the Internet, the same way AFC fans have been watching on DirecTV for years. In that way, it was hardly revolutionary. ESPN has also been doing this for years. I watched the NCAA tournament on an iPhone at a wedding of a friend that now has three kids. Though new for the NFL, groundbreaking, this wasn't. But that doesn't mean it wasn't top-notch, especially when transferring the game from my computer to my 58-inch TV via Google Chromecast. My wife walked into the room and after the unavoidable conversation about why football was on at 9:45 a.m. she looked at the TV. I said, "do you notice anything about the picture?" Her response was a swift "nope."
2. Con: It wasn't as good as watching on a game on television.
Period. That's it. That could be the full review. Yahoo!, CBS and the NFL did a great job, but watching it on TV would have been better in every single facet, unless you were in the car for the whole thing and wanted to watch while not driving. Everything seemed to work well -- we'll get to the glitches, problems, successes and everything in between, but there was one overall cloud hanging over Wembley Stadium (more so than the usual clouds hanging over the London stadium) and it was this question: So what? Just put this on CBS and then we wouldn't have to worry about the ever-changing lack of resolution.
3. Pro: It was easy for the computer layman to find.
I called my mom, a huge football fan, a knowledgeable football fan and someone who would probably get a C+/B- in high-school computer class. (Sorry, Ma.) I gave her the instructions: Find the NFL game that's being aired on Yahoo! She called back in 58 seconds, successful. I'd imagine most people would be able to find it too (though probably a little slower), but only if they knew about it. I don't think a lot of people remembered this game was on today. I certainly didn't and this is all I do. There's also the not-so-small cross-section of the country without Internet access. The numbers say 98% of America can get high-speed Internet but only 80% choose to get it. The cuts into viewers, but so does putting Monday Night Football on cable.
4. Con: Most people probably could only do what my mom did: Watch it on their computer but have no way to put it on a regular, football-watching TV.
I have all the streaming nonsense because it's my job and I'm a sucker for new technology. That includes Apple TV, Google Chrome, Amazon Fire TV Stick, etc -- all devices that would have helped me transfer video from my computer to my television. (The Chrome button was helpfully integrated into Yahoo's interface, which is sort of like the Hatfields helping the McCoys.) So I had no problem putting this on TV. But most people aren't like me or my millennial friends. They don't have three different devices that transfer video from their computers to their televisions. They don't stream Wake Forest basketball games on ESPN3 all winter. Those folks were able to watch, but just on their computers. How'd that work out?
Back to my mom: Me: "Would you ever watch a game like this?" Her: "Only if it was the Redskins and there were no other choice." (Though I suspect if there were a big Cowboys-Eagles game, she'd find a way.) Overall, watching on a computer is not a great viewing experience, unless you have one of those insane 31-inch displays, in which case you probably already own the technology to stream it elsewhere. And because the game, by rule, had to be played on free, over-the-air markets in Buffalo and Jacksonville, the only people who needed to watch this game on computer were Buffalo and Jacksonville fans living outside those cities, a subgroup that likely isn't too high. (Oh, and degenerate gamblers too.)
5. Pro: Overall, the picture quality was almost as good as any sporting event I've seen on the Internet.
There were a few buffering issues when I watched the game at home but the bigger problem was a picture that too often went to 360p-ish instead of to the HD that should have been streaming. This happened to me even while possessing an Internet speed that packs a wallop and will one day send me into bankruptcy due to its expense. And there were way too many glitches (near-instant pauses that quickly corrected themselves). But, again, these are nitpicks. Overall, I don't remember seeing a better total stream for three hours.
When I opened more tabs in my Chrome browser, the glitches became more pronounced for obvious reasons. One can't watch all of Taylor Swift's catalogue on YouTube and expect the same game quality on a live football game. Whatever the nuts and bolts behind Yahoo!'s servers, they worked. Still, the telecast was not yet that of Netflix or Amazon Prime (topics we'll get to in a bit).
6. Con: Others reported more buffering issues.
I talked to about a half-dozen people across the country and half seemed to have at least double or triple the buffering problems that I had in the D.C. suburbs on a 100/100 Fios connection over Wi-Fi. And, again, by the end of the game (for whatever reason) I wasn't getting nearly the picture quality I was at the beginning.
7. Pro: There was no authentication and the stream was easy to find.
Anyone who has ever spent 15 minutes signing up for NCAA on-demand or searching FS1 for a stream they know is there can be happy about this.
8. Con: You had to go through the Yahoo! site.
If ever this is going to work for mass appeal, there's going to need to be an app that can be downloaded to various machines (Apple TV, Roku, Chrome, FireStick, etc.) for a better user interface, sort of like MLB has with its MLB.TV app. Imagine going to Netflix to click on this live broadcast, for instance. Then, the middleman is cut out and you could fire up the game without having to go through an Internet browser.
9. Pro: It was a true mobile experience
After watching the first quarter from the comforts of home, I went and did some field tests at various locations during the second quarter.
A) On wireless on a computer at a Starbucks: Excellent. Almost an identical experience to the one at home, except the picture was almost too good. It felt similar to watching a soap opera or the those Hobbit movies that were shot in 48 fps. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but a little off-putting. Still, better too good a picture than too bad of one.
B) On wireless on a phone at Starbucks: Excellent, though not ideal. Same deal in terms of speed and quality, but football is not a game meant to watch on a phone. Frankly, no games are meant to be watched on a phone, except maybe that awesome SimCity one.
C) On Verizon LTE in the car: Unreal; we've come a long way from dial-up modems. This was probably the most amazed I was at the quality of the stream. Just running off 4G in a populated area, the game came in almost perfectly. I still had that minor problem of watching on a phone, though. And I imagine I'd have burned through my data plan pretty quickly if I'd watched much longer.
10. Con: The whole event felt completely and utterly meaningless.
Great! You can stream an NFL game the same way ESPN has been streaming every sporting even you can think of (from top-notch football games to DIII rowing) for the past few years. What was the point of all this? It might have driven traffic to Yahoo! and helped make back the estimated $20 million in rights fees and advertising the site paid for the game (though commercials that had been going for $200,000 for 30 seconds reportedly hit $50,000 before game time, according to Variety). But you're not Marissa Mayer, so what do you care?
So okay, you can drive your car with your feet, what now? Wouldn't it be easier to just air this game in the normal way people have been doing it for close to 75 years? The NFL's streaming experiment felt utterly superfluous in this way. It was like a football version of the Entourage movie. Who needed this? Why did it happen? Well, the answer is the same answer to almost every sports question there is.
11. Pro: $$$$$$$$.
Why does anything happen in business? Money. The loot. Gettin' paid. Though none of the major NFL network deals are up until 2021 (MNF on ESPN goes through then, the NBC, Fox and CBS packages go through 2022), this mostly successful telecast gives the NFL huge leverage the next time they go to the negotiating table. It's not rocket science: Whenever there are more potential bidders, it's good for the party auctioning things. And for a first try, this worked well and is only going to get better. Yahoo! proved that it, Google, Netflix, Amazon or whoever, could do this right now. And with that Thursday Night Football package that's with CBS on a year-to-year basis right now, don't be shocked it the courtship between the NFL and the Internet becomes more serious very soon..
And, oh yeah, for a Buffalo-Jacksonville matchup that started 27-3, that was one heck of a game.
(AP)
(Disclosure: The writer is a former Yahoo! employee.)
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