Get comfortable clicking instead of channel surfing. YouTube is emerging as the early favorite to land a four-game package of NFL regular-season games, according to Sports Business Journal.
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The league held those games back as part of its recent equity deal with ESPN, and now they appear headed toward another digital home.
Nothing is finalized, but SBJ labeled YouTube the "early leader" for the slate, with multiple bidders still involved. If this feels inevitable, that's because it probably is.
The games are tied to the newly approved agreement that gives ESPN ownership of NFL Network, while the NFL takes a 10 percent stake in ESPN. Translation: Everyone is invested in making the next distribution experiment work.
The exact games have not been determined, but international matchups are a natural fit. So are late-season standalone windows, including a possible expansion of the league's Black Friday offering, which has lived exclusively on Prime Video so far.
The numbers back it up. The NFL's first YouTube-exclusive game last season, a Week one matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers in Brazil, drew 18.5 million U.S. viewers, plus another 1.1 million internationally.
That was not a test run. That was proof of concept.
As the league continues to push toward streaming, YouTube feels less like a gamble and more like the next logical step. The NFL follows eyeballs. The eyeballs followed the link.
