National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell told reporters on Friday that the league is looking at streaming its first-ever regular-season game.
“We are aggressively pursuing the streaming of a regular-season game with our first over-the-top telecast,” the commissioner said during his annual State of the League address that’s part of Super Bowl week.
He added that any game with an OTT telecast would be carried on the local broadcast stations in the competing teams’s markets, but would “reach a worldwide audience including millions of homes that do not have traditional TV service.”
While live sports programming has largely been immune to the rise of digital and streaming options for viewers, sports outlets have begun to dip their toes in the OTT waters. ESPN was among the networks to launch on Dish’s SlingTV service, and both the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball have invested heavily in in-market streaming of local games.
“We will continue to develop new platforms,” Goodell said. “How our fans, especially our younger ones, connect with the game is changing every day.”
Read more of this story, including Goodell's comments on the "Deflategate" scandal, at broadcastingcable.com.
