The NFL and Verizon reached a streaming deal worth billions of dollars.
ESPN reported the following details Monday morning:
Verizon will pay approximately $2.5 billion in the five-year deal with the NFL, sources told ESPN. That would be roughly twice the annual price of Verizon’s previous deal with the league.
The new deal for the largest U.S. wireless carrier looks very different from its last deal. That’s because Verizon has gone from being solely a carrier to also being a video content company after its purchases of AOL in 2015 and Yahoo in 2017 for $4.4 billion each.
The deal allows Verizon to stream live in-market NFL games on any one of its websites, with Yahoo being the predominant home.
That is a whole lot of money. The NFL has desperately needed a win lately. People are constantly dragging the league through the mud for a variety of reasons. Goodell definitely needed something he could point to as a big win.
I think scoring a streaming deal worth a stunning $2.5 billion counts as a win on any day of the week. It’s also a pretty good sign that Verizon is confident in the NFL’s future. Why else would they cut a check for an unbelievable amount of money? Generally speaking, you don’t fork over billions if you think something is a losing venture.
Now we’ll have to wait and see if this massive deal leads to more confidence among other advertisers.