Chris Whalen’s Random Life

This past weekend I had the opportunity to watch the long awaited Patriots/Giants game from a market other than either Boston or New York. With the battle going on between the NFL and the cable companies (Peter King at SI.com wrote a great article breaking it down) did anyone else notice the game broadcast turned into a sort of NFL Network infomercial? It really did seem like every other ad was not only for NFL Network, but taking shots at large cable. (I really liked the one in the diner where patrons were talking about letting the cable companies keep the makeover shows and shopping channels!). While we can talk at length about the effort Roger Goodell went to bring the game to the fans because so many fans wanted to see it, or the role government or the other networks had in this broadcast….it is pretty clear that part of the deal was definately a large media buy. I really would be interested to know if anyone kept track of how many spots NFL Network had on the other networks carrying the game. Certainly the networks have the ability to sub in their own ads, we see it all the time on cable, but the deal certianly looks like the NFL had the opportunity to run a certain amout of it’s own advertising. Certainly it seemed to be allot more than what I usually see on the NFL Network broadcasts (yes I subscribe and watch regularly).

What will the impact be? The NFL has proven to be exceptional at PR in the past, despite the Pacman Jones and Michael Vick issues. Is this an attempt to build a groundswell of support for them during what proved to be the most watched regular season game in year? I certianly hope so. I have no love for the cable companies and certainly believe there is more than enough margin in their pricing to support the NFL Network. Big Cable has to see that the future of content in general lies with the content producers, not the distribution mechanism. The NFL has consumable content with a large demand, a recently saw a study that stated 52% of all US residents consider themselves NFL fans. Dwarfing the other sports ( I think baseball was second at 28% or so).

The real question will be how will this affect the NFL content strategy or will it? The NFL does not allow content of more than 45 seconds to be shown by networks without a fee it is my understanding. Does the popularity of this game give them a platform to make the content more consumable on more vehicles more easily? Such as the ability to see entire games on my PC or mobile? Or subscribe to NFL Network and consume the content anywhere through the TV, PC, XBox, mobile etc?

I think beyond the cable battle, this game may prove to be the market test needed to make the decision on how, where, and what pricing model would be used to make NFL content more available and consumable.