Roger Goodell on Yahoo stream of Bills-Jaguars: ‘We’re really thrilled with it’
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said on an appearance on ESPN’s Mike and Mike Show Tuesday morning that he was thrilled from the results of the Yahoo-streamed broadcast of the Week 7 game between the Buffalo Bills and the Jacksonville Jaguars in London.
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“We’re really thrilled with it. It took a game that was going to have a limited amount of distribution on television. It probably would have gone to 10 percent or less of the country on Sunday had we not chosen this distribution,” Goodell said. “It turned out to reach a worldwide audience.
“It was a tremendous experience for us. It was a great experience for our fans.”
Yahoo’s exclusive live stream of the game attracted a huge global audience: 15.2 million unique viewers and 33.6 million total views. The CBS broadcast was only available through regular TV in the local markets of Buffalo and Jacksonville.
Goodell said he thinks the Yahoo live stream experience helped expand the NFL viewing market — especially overseas — and that future NFL internet streams will be considered based on the success of the maiden voyage on Sunday.
“We reached new fans through this platform,” Goodell said. “It gave us a tremendous amount of learnings so that we can really formulate our media strategy and how we can continue to reach the broadest number of fans, and reach them with an engagement that we may not be able to offer on other platforms.
“It’s not just the numbers we saw. We saw record numbers … we think all that is positive. It’s really the learnings behind it that we’re interested in.”
Goodell said the league was pleased with the execution of broadcast and that the league is looking forward to working with Yahoo again.
“The most important thing was technically delivering it, and Yahoo did a terrific job of that,” he said. “We were proud to partner with them, they did a terrific job with it and we look forward to partnering with them again.”
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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm
