Flumesday.com

NFL Internet Plan Misses The Point

NFL fans around the world should have been excited to learn that the league and Yahoo have launched a joint venture to broadcast all 480 football games over the internet for fans abroad. However, the NFL, while purporting to want to increase the international popularity of the game, has set an obscene price for their service that will serve to repel, not engage, the international fan. Announced Thursday, NFL Game Pass is only available to subscribers outside North America which, on the surface, sounds likes a good deed. How charming, the NFL wants to spread its wings and show the rest of the world, oblivious to football, what a great game it is. Lord knows, NFL Europe hasn't fulfilled that mission. But there's the kicker, the price for the internet plan (and I'll remind you it's for international subscribers i.e. people who don't have American money) is $25 a week and $250 for the entire season. While these prices might not immediately make your eyes pop, let's compare this plan to MLB.TV, baseball's internet plan. Major League Baseball, also a 30-team league, offers the entire season, 4860 games, for a reasonable $70. For those who aren't math majors, one game on Game Pass costs about 52 cents, whereas a game on MLB.TV costs just over 1 cent. Not to mention, with MLB.TV's 70 buck plan, you can watch highlights, listen to radio broadcasts, watch condensed games and watch any archived game from the entire season. Game Pass offers none of this. As Flumesday is located in Shanghai, China and relies heavily on internet sports offerings (college football here is amazing) , I will say this-- in a country where the per capita income is $865 a year, nobody, and I mean nobody, is going to explore watching the NFL. And that goes for the rest of Asia, except for Japan. Granted, the NFL probably didn't have the Chinese in mind when pricing Game Pass, but even still, the price of this plan is prohibitive even in the States. The American sports fans abroad rely on these internet sports plans to follow their teams. And the NFL, already behind baseball and basketball in releasing their webcast, has made their product out of the grasp of the average Joe football fan. All of this talk about expanding the scope of the game is crap. The NFL missed a perfect opportunity, with their foreign-only webcast, to show to the world how great football is.

•Story from Reuters