Amazon Sees a Winner With Streaming Football

January 16, 2018

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The future of streaming is now, and everyone is trying to figure out a way to cash in. There is a growing demand for better live streaming services as more people use it. The boom in live streaming has led to more people needing a better broadband plan because theirs is so slow their stream lags. If you are finding that you need a new broadband plan to improve your streaming experience then you can find the best broadband prices here. The boom means that companies are trying to get in on the action and one of the biggest movers and shakers in the market is Amazon. Bezos’ Prime service started out as discounted shipping and other perks for members, but it has grown into a major player in the streaming media marketplace.

This could be an issue for some people though as Amazon is bidding big money in order to claim the rights of big streaming packages, such as the rights to stream football. However, if people have seen their favorite show or live streaming platform been taken away from you by Amazon or any other streaming service, you can still watch the streams by using a Kodi box. This box is probably the best-known multimedia player that can let you watch a myriad of shows due to its open open-source software.

As with most streaming services, Amazon started with canned content from other providers, then slowly added scripted programming made in-house. The next logical step was live sports, but that has been a difficult task every streaming service has tried to solve.

Social media has tried offering live sports with mixed success. Amazon was one of the first streaming services to do it right through exclusive content agreements with the big boss in the live sports game: the National Football League.

This past NFL season, Amazon streamed several games and did reasonably well, based on comparative metrics. Amazon added to what Twitter was able to do with streaming football in 2016, topping 316,000 in per-minute audience. A big jump over what Twitter managed the year before.

That’s not to say there isn’t room for improvement. Even in what was, for the NFL, an off year, TV ratings for NFL games did fairly well, at least on Sundays and Monday nights. Thursday struggled, but TV still topped streaming by a wide margin. That said, the trend definitely favors streaming media. How soon will they reach a tipping point?

Jim DeLorenzo, head of Amazon Sports, told the Associated Press it’s too early to say. “We’re just in the early stages here. We were definitely pleased with the way things played out. It was great to partner with the NFL on this, and we were really happy with how our customers reacted to it. But it’s too soon to say how this impacts our strategy going forward.”

Translation: we haven’t quite decided how far we’re going to push this, but it will be a process. During the football off-season, Amazon has contracted to broadcast certain other sports, including professional volleyball and tennis.

One of the factors helping Amazon is the quality of the stream. The picture, for most users with a high-speed connection, was clear and crisp and delivered even faster than some cable connections. That, in itself, is a real coup. In most cases, internet streaming content is slower than cable, broadcasting with a bit of a delay.

If Amazon and other streaming services can keep up this level of service, the “delay” on that coming tipping point could be very short indeed.

Ronn Torossian is the Founder and CEO of the New York based public relations firm 5WPR: one of the 20 largest PR Firms in the United States.