NFL Analyst Says Streaming Super Bowl Exclusively is an ‘Inevitability’

Over 200 million people watched the Super Bowl in 2023, which makes the idea of streaming the game exclusively seem far-fetched.

NFL chief media and business officer Brian Rolapp said in an article from Sportico that the NFL is a “long way off” from the exclusive streaming of a Super Bowl.

“I don’t think I’ll be working there when that happens,” Rolapp said during Washington Post’s Futurist Summit. “I think we’re a long way off from that. We had 200 million people watch the Super Bowl. I think the Internet could handle that technically, but we’re not quite there yet.”

“I think the NFL specifically, but sports in general, is really the reason why people are showing up to linear television,” Rolapp said. “It serves our purposes very well: The vast majority of our games are still on linear television and even the games we stream exclusively, like the Amazon games, are on over-the-air television for free in the local markets of the participating teams.”

Mike Florio of NBC’s Pro Football Talk says streaming a Super Bowl exclusively is an inevitability

NFL analyst Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk wrote in an article that he believes a Super Bowl will be streamed in the future. The Super Bowl has already been available on streaming platforms, but it has remained accessible in its long-time home of linear television.

“Regardless, times have changed. They’ll keep changing. The NFL is both trying to spur change and keep up with it. When it happens, a Super Bowl on a streaming platform won’t be revolutionary. It will be the fulfillment of an inevitability,” Florio wrote.

While Florio could be talking about a future that extends beyond the tenure of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, Goodell has expressed hesitation when asked about an exclusively-streamed Super Bowl in an article from Pro Football Talk.

“Goodell said that the Wild Card game between the Chiefs and Broncos that was shown on Peacock ‘showed that our fans are on these platforms’ and that ‘we have to fish where the fish are’ when it comes to finding an audience for games. While they will be fishing in those ponds in the future, Goodell said that there will not be a Super Bowl on any of those services while he’s in the job,” Josh Alper wrote.

“Certainly not in my time,” Goodell said.

The NFL is no stranger to streaming exclusively, but it could take time for it to happen to the Super Bowl

The NFL is already deep into the world of exclusively-streamed games. Amazon Prime has exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football and they have just concluded their second year with those rights.

The exclusively-streamed Thursday Night Football games showed improvement in their second year. In the first year, Amazon Prime brought in 9.58 million viewers per game. The second year of exclusively-streamed Thursday Night Football games saw a 24% increase to 11.9 million viewers per game.

In the last season before giving the Thursday Night Football keys to Amazon Prime, they averaged 13.2 million viewers per game.

The big step the NFL took in 2023 was the exclusively-streamed Wild Card matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins. A playoff game was unavailable to linear television viewers for the first time as the game was only available on Peacock and the NFL+ app.

According to Yahoo, it was the most-streamed live event in the history of the United States. It brought in 27.6 million total viewers. The blowout matchup between the Cleveland Browns and the Houston Texans, which was on linear television, brought in 29 million viewers and it didn’t feature the face of the league in Patrick Mahomes.

While the exclusively streamed playoff game broke records for Peacock and streaming as a whole, fans were not happy with a playoff game being behind a paywall.

I love my football but I’m sick of the NFL trying to milk every last penny they can out of us fans!

— 🇺🇸Scarlett Mayhem🇺🇸 (@ScarlettO66) January 19, 2024

Yeah. Screw the NFL. I’m not paying for an app to watch their games.

— John Hamblin (@JohnDHamblin) January 19, 2024

I call BS. This was an awful thing to do.

— JulieS 🟦 🦬🦬🦬 (@ntvnyer21) January 15, 2024

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