Being one of the most watched sporting events in the world, the National Football League’s (NFL) championship game is broadcast in over 130 countries in more than 30 languages. The final game, Super Bowl, is the most watched broadcast every year in the US, with over 115 million viewers tuned in to this year’s edition in February. While the game has been dominating the country, it is being backed by not just the greatest brands in the world pouring in millions of dollars, but also supported by the biggest tech companies in the world. 

Amazon Brings AI to NFL

In Amazon’s Q3 earnings, of the many high points in the results, NFL has been a key player. The subscription revenue has increased by 14% to $10.2 billion and is driven by the NFL. The company is in the second season of a 11-year exclusive deal of $11 billion to distribute Thursday Night Football (TNF are NFL games scheduled to be played on Thursday evenings during the NFL season) through Prime Video. 

Amazon has brought AI to TNF, making it an interactive experience for their viewers. Features such as ‘X-Ray’, gives fans real-time access to live statistics and data, ‘Rapid Recap’ generates 13 two-minute-long highlights to help viewers catch up on games, and many other features. 

‘Prime Vision with Next Gen Stats’ powered by AWS, provides insights by capturing real-time data on player’s location, speed, and acceleration using sensors hidden within their shoulder pads. Amazon collects over 300 million data points per season to train their machine learning models for gaining insights from every game. The insights on pass and position are shown real-time, giving viewers the ability to observe and predict the game strategy, akin to a quarterback (key player). 

As per Amazon’s Q3 results, the TNF season opener attracted 15.1 million viewers, and was the Prime Video’s most watched TNF game ever. The first six games brought an average of 12.9 million viewers, which was an increase of 25% from the previous season. Interestingly, Amazon has committed to paying $1 billion annually for the exclusive streaming rights to NFL games. 

Tussle for Broadcast Rights 

Last year, the National Football League revealed a multi-year deal with Google, giving Youtube TV and Youtube Primetime Channels exclusive rights to distribute NFL Sunday Ticket, that allows viewers to watch Sunday afternoon NFL games that are not typically available on local channels. 

The deal is said to be around $2 billion annually for seven years. DirecTV was previously paying $1.5 billion a year for the rights. However, as per a new report, Youtube is said to lose over $8.86 billion from now to 2029 with yearly declines of about $1.27 billion. 

Interestingly, Apple was one of the forerunners to bag the deal, however, the agreement did not fall through, as Apple wanted to reportedly pay less for the deal, so as to offer the product at lower prices. Though this deal failed, Apple was not completely left out. The NFL announced Apple Music as the new sponsor of the Super Bowl halftime show from 2023. Taking over Pepsi, who were the sponsors for 10 years, Apple will pay $50 million annually over a five- year span. 

Big ‘Technology’ Partners

In 2021, Cisco, an enterprise networking and security company, signed a multi-year deal to become the official technology partner for NFL. The partnership aims to create a unified platform and establish a robust technological foundation for NFL’s operations and communications with improved speed, intelligence and security measures. 

Every NFL stadium’s replay control room is built on Cisco technology, and almost all of the league’s official partners and two-thirds of NFL stadiums, including SoFi Stadium in LA and State Farm Stadium in Arizona, that hosted Super Bowls, is powered by Cisco technology.  

In Tech Mahindra’s recent Q2 earnings call, CP Gurnani, CEO and MD of the company announced that they are working with NFL. In 2018, the company signed a multi-year deal to be the technology, analytics and strategy partner for Jacksonville Jaguars (NFL team).  

The Best ‘Playground’

The first Super Bowl that was held in 1967 had close to 50 million viewers, and was the only year to have two networks broadcast it (CBS and NBC). The viewership has more than doubled with the latest edition (57th) in February, reaching 115.1 million viewers, making it the most watched Super Bowl of all time, and becoming the most popular TV program of all time. 

Tech firms understand that the NFL guarantees a large audience, and there’s no better platform than the game’s coverage. By partnering with such a major sporting event, companies leverage their technology and brand power : a probable win for them.