Turns out the National Football League is “in talks” with Verizon Wireless — which just so happens to be the official wireless network of the NFL — about streaming at least some of its games to an upcoming tablet on the carrier.
So says NFL media exec Brian Rolapp, who told the Wall Street Journal that the league is “currently talking to Verizon” about the possibility.
Wait — isn’t the NFL already on a tablet? Well, yes, if you count DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket app for the iPad, which lets subscribers of the satellite TV carrier’s Sunday Ticket “To Go” service stream regular-season NFL games to their tablets on any given Sunday.
Of course, NFL Sunday Ticket on the iPad (or the iPhone, or Android handsets) comes with a few strings attached. You can watch only games played on Sunday afternoon (no Sunday, Monday, or Thursday night football for you!), you must be a DirecTV subscriber (although you can sign up for the online Sunday Ticket if you certify that your region or building doesn’t get DirecTV service), and the NFL Sunday Ticket subscription itself costs a whopping $350 a season (which I decided to go ahead and pony up for this year, although I still get queasy thinking about it).
As far as the NFL’s tablet talks with Verizon go, the Journal article offers precious few details. Verizon execs wouldn’t comment directly on the NFL angle of the story, and the league’s Rolapp was maddeningly vague about how the deal — if it comes to fruition — might play out. “The NFL will be on a tablet,” Rolapp says in the Journal piece, before adding that “it’s a question of what shape or form.” Well, naturally.
Verizon Wireless became the NFL’s official wireless partner (taking over from Sprint) back in March, and the carrier’s free NFL app lets you stream live audio of regular season games; $10-a-month-extra V Cast Video subscribers can also stream video of Sunday- and Thursday-night contests, as well as the NFL Network’s RedZone “live look-in” channel.
So, would a possible Verizon tablet with the NFL include streaming for all NFL games, or just the two night games that V Cast Video users can access now? Speaking only on the phone side of things, Verizon multimedia exec Colson Hiller told the Journal that “we will have to see” whether the carrier can “secure rights to every game.”
I’d imagine such negotiations (beyond bringing tablets as well as phones into the mix) would also involve some back-and-forth with DirecTV, which recently extended its Sunday Ticket exclusive with the NFL through 2014.
Interestingly enough, while Verizon officials wouldn’t comment directly on NFL-on-a-tablet talks, carrier officials did spend a fair amount of time talking to the Journal about its 4G LTE plans, and the fact (as Verizon’s Hiller puts it) that “we need some kind of content to bring it [meaning the LTE network] to life.”
And wait, didn’t Verizon say something earlier this month about launching LTE in 30 “NFL cities” before the year is out? Interesting.
Last but not least, there are rumors floating around of an Android 3.0-powered Motorola tablet — the so-called “Stingray” — that might (if Engadget’s tipsters are correct) arrive on Verizon early next year, and may also be “hardware upgradeable to LTE.” This keeps getting better and better. (Of course, there’s no reason that future Samsung Galaxy Tab owners couldn’t get in on the NFL action, too.)
All very nice — if it happens. And I wonder … how much would Verizon subscribers have to pay to get the NFL streamed to their tablets? $350 a season, as is the deal for NFL Sunday Ticket users? Let’s hope not.
• Wall Street Journal: NFL, Verizon Talk Tablets
— Ben Patterson is a technology writer for Yahoo! News.
come true.
The Giants are a complicated squad to figure out. Yesterday they seemed like Super Bowl contenders -