Field & Stream: Amazon Debuts Spot Promoting First "Thursday Night Football" Broadcast

A NEW ERA: In this week's SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL, John Ourand noted the Bears-Packers game "marks the first of 11 NFL games Amazon will stream this season." Amazon will "stream four different feeds of the game." It will "carry the regular U.S. feed produced by CBS," but it also will have "three different sets of announcers -- play-by-play and analysts -- call the game in different languages over the CBS-produced video." Games will be "available in Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and a secondary English feed." Amazon Head of Sports Jim DeLorenzo said, "This is a global deal for us. That really dovetails well with some of the NFL’s goals to try and increase the popularity of the NFL globally. All U.S. leagues are trying to increase their international footprint. We have the same incentives on our side, trying to make sure that we’re presenting this in the best way possible for our customers." Amazon "would not say where their announcers will call the games, but they are not likely to be on-site at the host stadiums." More likely, they will "use a video feed in a central city to call the games." Amazon execs would also "not say who the announcers will be." The secondary English feed is set up for "extremely casual fans or people who live in English-speaking countries and don’t follow the NFL." The feed will be "elementary, essentially for people who don’t know what a first down is." While many TV execs are "wary of Amazon’s overall sports ambitious, they do not expect Amazon’s audience to be much higher than the relatively small numbers Twitter delivered last season." Twitter "averaged 265,000 viewers on an average minute basis last season" (SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL, 9/11 issue).