The NFL is hoping to score with a major tech company in order to stream Thursday Night Football games next season.
Sources told SportsBusiness Daily that the NFL has told TV networks including CBS, ESPN, Fox, NBC and Turner -- as well as digital companies such as Google, Yahoo, Apple and Amazon -- that it is accepting bids for the Thursday Night Football package.
The NFL declined to comment Wednesday. However, Brian Rolapp, NFL's EVP of Media, hinted at a potential streaming deal in a recent podcast with Re-Code's Peter Kafka.
"I think that when we look at Thursday Night football we are talking to numerous people both traditional media companies and some of the Internet guys and I think there will be a heavy digital competent of that," Rolapp told Kafka. "It is just a question of what the model will be and how we will do it. Literally as we sit here today recording this podcast we are thinking through it and talking to people. We have not made any decisions."
The speculation comes just two months after NFL successfully streamed the Bills-Jaguars game from London through Yahoo in October. Yahoo reportedly paid $17 million for the rights to stream the game, which was watched by over 15 million people across the world.
"One of the reasons we did that is that it's a question of the Internet is ready for full scale distribution of NFL football," Rolapp told Kafka. "One strength of the NFL is our games have been widely available ... that reach has really served our sport well. Now reach is more complicated. Our question is can the Internet reach as many fans as it could on television? I think the jury is out on that a little bit."
The NFL has treated Thursday Night Football, which kicked off in 2006, "as a risk capital," Rolapp said.
"While most of our TV rights are locked up until 2021, Thursday is where we could experiment, Thursday is where we could drive our own assets, Thursday where we could start testing models for our future."