To the joy and frustration of football fans across the United States, the era of National Football League games appearing exclusively on a streaming service is upon us. Amazon Prime Video is the home for “Thursday Night Football” this upcoming season, marking the first time in league history a streaming service will be the solo carrier for a package of national games. Local broadcast stations for the teams playing in a given week will also carry the games over the air. People who want to watch the games will need to sign up for an Amazon Prime account, which costs $14.99 a month or $139 a year, or a Prime Video membership, which is $8.99 a month. New game features Viewers will be given the choice to watch, record or start from the beginning of the broadcast. If they don’t want to have to keep recording individual games, they’ll also have the option of recording the entire slate of Thursday night games for the season. Amazon is also debuting other new technology features. On most platforms (it’s still working on a deal with Roku), it will offer “X-Ray stats,” which will give viewers the ability to see real-time statistics on screen. In addition to standard stats such as yards and touchdowns, they will include so-called next-generation figures, such as average time to throw for quarterbacks and yards after contact for running backs and receivers. Players will wear uniforms enhanced with Amazon Web Services chips, allowing for instant updates. Amazon will also have a customer package of highlights via X-Ray that update through the game for viewers who missed the early action and want to catch up. For Fire TV users, viewers will be able to speak commands such as “show me stats” or “play the last touchdown” into the remote control. Those features will be ready for the Thursday Night Football regular season opener. Continuing a trend put in place by Disney’s ESPN and Paramount Global, Amazon will also offer alternative broadcasts for people who want a less serious telecast, beginning with the popular comedy YouTube group Dude Perfect. Amazon plans to add other alternative feeds over time. Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/19/amazon-thursday-night-football-new-era-nfl-streaming.html
Are we getting any closer to people who live well out of market having another option from the dish to view their team on Sunday? Nfl ticket without the dish is unavailable here, and I don’t want to watch illegally.
I absolutely hate that all of this shit is going onto streaming services. Going back and forth from my one streaming station to regular TV to watch other sporting events in between commercials is going to be so trash. Basically need a second TV now until baseball ends.
Many years ago, the Rangers games used to be broadcast on channel 9 and I’d watch as many as I could, rooting hard for the home team. Then they switched to pay TV and my father wouldn’t pay for the extra channel so I wasn’t able to watch their games. Over time, I stopped following hockey to the point that I’m at now; unable to name who was in the Stanley Cup, never mind who won. They might have made a bigger profit, but over the long term, they lost fans and thus the potential to earn even more. I fear that the NFL might go down the same path.
The younger generation will be able to keep up with the streaming only games, but someone like my father who is 65 and doesn't even know how to turn on a computer or send email has absolutely no chance in ever watching a TNF game again unless I set it up for him. Should see the headache I have to go through to get him to watch a baseball game that is only streaming on AppleTV. Amazon paid almost double what Fox was paying for the TNF rights.
Your father has 5 years on me and we’re both about as tech savvy. Sadly, if I don’t watch the games, my kids will never watch on their own. If they’re not exposed to it, how can they become fans? I fear that sports in general and the NFL in particular is pricing itself out of the common man’s reach.
You can watch amazon prime on your TV no PC required. A firestick in the back of the TV gives you Amazon TV and other things, you do not need to be tech-savvy, it literally is pressing a button on a remote control and selecting prime TV and then what ever channel they have the football on. The added bonus ATM is a lot of people already pay for Amazon prime for the postage savings on delivery, all these new things are ultimately free add-ons. Of course, in future they will no doubt be an extra charge but enjoy it for free while you can.
And then trying to get someone who isn’t tech savvy to figure out how to get back to regular tv for a baseball playoff game.. i think you’re underselling how inept people are when it comes to technology. Switching between prime and regular cable for games is a pain in the ass. It’s significantly easier to tell them the nfl game is on network (channel X) and the baseball game is on TBS (channel Y). Just press “last” on the remote.
How do they manage with their normal TV? It literally is just normal TV, it isn't in the slightest like streaming the football off NFLBites. I'm shit with technology, especially when something goes wrong.
What is the lag time as it pertains to cable? Live betting is a bitch when streaming a game. I’m not a fan of any of this streaming bullshit as others have said because you can’t change the channel seamlessly. But the technology will get better. The worry is that all of cable TV is going to go ala carte. Either pay per channel or pay per amount watched or some bullshit like that.
They are fine with a normal TV. It's when you throw in another remote, search for the amazon prime/apple tv apps, then switching back seamlessly like JV said. It's a pain in the ass. Didn't even think about the betting live aspect of this. Damn..
If you guys need to simplify it, go with Roku. The user interface hasn’t changed in over a decade and it’s by far the quickest media player in terms of switch time between apps. I don’t know about any others but I know Xfinity down here in central Jersey has all of the streaming apps built into the cable box. All you have to do is say “Apple TV” into the remote and it’ll pop up. I will say that all of the streaming apps have done a good job making sure that the games are right on top and it’s one or two button clicks to launch them so there’s no searching for em.
Worry? that's way better. I've been wanting to pay by channel forever. The cable model of paying $200 per month for 160 channels when you watch only 5 of them anyway sucks
What can the cable companies even do? Discovery + is 5 bucks a month and contains all the Warner Bros. programming. Are the cable companies gonna write a sternly worded email to Warner Bros. executives asking them to stop offering their own streaming service? They gonna take em out back with some baseball bats?
What does that have to do with the conversation? I said if cable companies move to an ala carte menu option, they would make sure it is not cheaper than they’re current model. That has nothing to do with them waging war on the streaming services.
When TNF streamed on Twitch (another Amazon website) and on Prime the stream was ahead of OTA (antenna) when I tested it last year which was surprising because antenna is almost always ahead of cable followed by an internet stream. I was connected via wifi too, not ethernet which would minimize the delay a bit more. So because of that I don't think you'll have to worry. You can test lag right now as Prime also does MLB games for free. Right now it's Mets VS Yankees.
So apparently you can watch via Twitch without a Prime sub. This may be only for preseason though. Only time will tell. https://www.twitch.tv/primevideo
