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If you’re a regular viewer of Sunday NFL football, your routine will start a little earlier this weekend. The game between the Buffalo Bills and the Jacksonville Jaguars, which will be played in London as part of the NFL’s international series, kicks off at 9:30 a.m. EDT. And Yahoo — as in the internet search and news giant — has the broadcast.
The game will be available for live streaming on the Yahoo apps for iPhone and iPad, Android, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, Tivo, Roku, Xbox 360 and on newer Samsung and Vizio smart TVs. if you don’t have access to any of the aforementioned devices, you can watch the game on your desktop or laptop computer, too, by visiting NFLstream.yahoo.com.
Decider caught up with Adam Cahan (@adamcahan), Yahoo’s SVP of Mobile and Emerging Products, to talk about Yahoo’s plans for its first NFL broadcast.
DECIDER: This will be a global live stream. There’s not a list of countries where it won’t be available?
Adam Cahan: Nope, there’s no blackouts.
Is this Yahoo’s first broadcast of a major sporting event?
As a major global sporting event, this is really an industry first. We have done things like Olympics coverage but nothing at this scale. For us, this is ultimately about delivering an extraordinary user experience. The idea is to bring our audience something exclusive with a partner like the NFL. We think we’re pretty unique as far as being available on a large number of platforms and on a global scale. And Yahoo Sports is one of our strongest franchises.
What kind of targets do you have internally for what you’ll consider a successful broadcast?
One of the things we’re trying to demonstrate is our ability to scale a global audience. For a partner like the NFL, it’s important for us to be able to show that we can rival the reach of TV or other kinds of internet delivery. We have a lot of technical metrics in terms of the user experience. We’re doing 60 frames per second [Ed. Note: Network and cable broadcasts are generally 30 frames per second.], which is really pushing the technical boundaries for IP delivery. No one has ever really done that before on this scale. In sports, you really notice the difference with that kind of frames per second.
Are you using your own on-air broadcast team?
In terms of the actual broadcast, we have a lead-in show that we are hosting from our Fantasy Football Live that will have Katie Couric with Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly. During the broadcast, we’ll have an audio channel and a Yahoo studios channel for fantasy football. We’re also airing the game in Spanish and will have closed captions.
The play-by-play commentator is Kevin Harlan, the analyst is Rich Gannon, and the sideline reporter is Jamie Erdahl. They’re all CBS, which is handling the production end of the broadcast. It will be a typical NFL broadcast experience, and we’ll be enhancing that with some audio tracks of our own commentators and the pre-game show.
The game is at 9:30 a.m. in the eastern United States and in the afternoon in Europe. Was the scheduling to make the game prime time in China and India?
It was really about how do we get to the widest possible audience — catching the U.S. at an acceptable time, Europe at an acceptable time, and as many emerging markets as possible. For a mobile audience, there really is no prime time anymore.
Do you have some expectations for platforms — that mobile will be a certain percentage of the total, over-the-top boxes will be a certain percentage of the total?
It’s an interesting question. We think it will start as a desktop phenomenon as a certain extent because that’s where people are online and checking their email at that time of day. Over the course of the broadcast, I expect it will shift.
And you think that will be driven by social media awareness?
I think it will be more about where consumers are at a given point in time. I suspect you’ll see a handoff — desktop moves to mobile and to OTT platforms.
How market-specific will the ad inserts be?
From an advertiser perspective, one of the thing that was important for us and for the NFL was to bring the kind of advertiser relationship that Yahoo has to the table. We focused on more of a broadcast-like experience. We’re working with premium sponsors who want a broad reach, and our ability to tap into that advertiser pool is a strength for Yahoo. We’re focusing much more on that than specific targeting.
Is this a branding loss-leader for Yahoo, or do you expect to make more in advertising than what you’re spending in broadcast rights?
For us, it is absolutely a business opportunity. It is a critical partnership, and we’re thrilled that the NFL selected us. In every platform shift — broadcast to satellite, and from that to internet — live sports has led the way. It’s must-watch content that leads the audience to those experiences, so it’s absolutely a business opportunity.
You said you think viewers will be changing platforms throughout the game. What is the metric that Yahoo is looking to — the number of simultaneous streams at various points during the game?
Total streams will be the big measure, but we’re really looking at the quality of the experience. For us is really a technical challenge and opportunity for us to show what a global streaming platform can accomplish.
And as far as the advertising goes, you don’t need anything like rating points. You’re measuring everything as it goes out.
We’ll be able to say we have reached a certain number of people, and we’ll be able to give our advertisers metrics on the demographics. For those advertisers, it’s a unique product in that regard that has the reach and scale of a broadcast medium with the metrics that are associated with internet delivery.
Yahoo and the NFL did not disclose the terms of the deal in the original announcement. Is that still the case?
Right, that is still the case.
Was this a one-game deal with the NFL, or does the agreement include another Yahoo game next season?
This was an exclusive partnership for this one game. We view it as an opportunity to showcase what we’re capable of for future opportunities with the NFL.
Netflix said last week that it doesn’t foresee getting into the broadcast of live sports. Do you expect other streaming platforms like Yahoo or Hulu to start bidding for those contracts either exclusively or non-exclusively with broadcast partners?
From an industry perspective, I think we’re all seeing a decline in traditional media. You can talk about millennials and cord-cutting, and we’re starting to see that the medium by which audiences consume content has fundamentally shifted. Millennials are not being addressed by TV at all; their consumption is much more online and on devices. We’re all looking at that as a massive opportunity for someone like a Yahoo to take advantage of that shift to IP mediums.
Do you think that league contracts — NFL, NBA, college football conferences — will develop into a model with a broadcast partner and a streaming partner, or do you think streaming and broadcast will more be competing against each other?
I see opportunities for both/and. One of the reasons why I think the NFL is doing this, although I don’t speak for them, is to have a partner that can deliver at scale. Because of the technical capabilities of this platform now, we are witnessing an addressable audience that used to be only traditional broadcast. We’re poised to prove that.
Is Yahoo looking to bid on broadcast rights for any sports leagues?
I can’t comment on that, but I can tell you that we’re very excited about this opportunity with the NFL.
As far as non-sports content, is there definitely not going to be another season of Community?
That’s right.
What’s Yahoo’s attitude going forward with high-profile original series?
Generally speaking, we have seen tremendous growth in video. Our video streams are up 100 percent year-over-year. Our total video time watched is up 82 percent year-on-year across our editorial and license content. Where we have done exceptionally well in sports, finance and news, where we have strong relationships with our audience, we have tried to understand how to scale and grow those audiences. We’re not really commenting on specific original content, but video has been rapidly scaling for us.
[Subsequent to this interview, Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman Yahoo in a call with investors that original scripted programming had not been profitable for the company. “What we concluded is certain of our original video content, we couldn’t see a way to make money over time,” CFO Ken Goldman said. “I’m thinking of Community, I’m thinking of Sin City Saints and so forth.”]
Is that mostly news and sports? Not much user-generated content?
We really don’t have much user-generated content outside of Tumblr. We have emerging categories like the digital magazines that cover style and other areas, but news, sports and finance are our core pillars.
Do you foresee getting into other high-profile markets — a late-night talk show or scripted shows like what Netflix is doing — or do you not see those things as your brand?
I’ve been around long enough to never say never. Our key franchises like Katie Couric’s news coverage as our global anchor have been tremendously successful for us. We have been breaking sports news, especially around the NBA. We have distinctive programming in those areas and have been successful at it. I don’t want to say never on those other things, but that’s where we’re seeing success today.
How are people watching Katie Couric? Is that appointment viewing or more on-demand content that’s updated periodically?
It’s more on-demand and often features. For example, when we have news events like the papal visit, we will often feature her on the home page. Katie is know for interviews and thought pieces, and sometimes you will see that in other areas of the site.
Will Yahoo announce the viewership numbers for the NFL game?
We’re not talking yet about what we will or won’t announce after the game.
What about projections? Do you think the numbers will be commensurate to a CBS or FOX afternoon broadcast? More? Less?
We haven’t really shared those numbers, but we are certainly do look at benchmarks around what we have seen others accomplish and where we think we can be. We do think it’s fair to say that the scale of the audience is one of the key success criteria.
