John Oran
Appearances
Up First from NPR
Government Shutdown Averted, German Christmas Market Attack, Netflix And The NFL
Thank you for having me, Aisha.
Up First from NPR
Government Shutdown Averted, German Christmas Market Attack, Netflix And The NFL
Well, there have been a couple of hiccups, particularly with the boxing match. When people did get in, sometimes there were too many people that were watching so that everything got buffered. The video wasn't as clear as people are expecting when they watch live events.
Up First from NPR
Government Shutdown Averted, German Christmas Market Attack, Netflix And The NFL
So one of the main things I'm going to be watching for Christmas is to see whether people have problems coming in to watch the NFL games. And particularly, as you mentioned, when Beyonce ends up being the halftime show, we know from the Super Bowl, the halftime show gets the highest ratings by far for the game because there's a crush of people that want to come in to see that.
Up First from NPR
Government Shutdown Averted, German Christmas Market Attack, Netflix And The NFL
But really, this is a short-term problem. Amazon has proved that it can get tens of millions of streams and still provide a quality broadcast with no buffering. I have no doubt that Netflix will get there. I do have some doubt whether they'll be able to get there next week or not.
Up First from NPR
Government Shutdown Averted, German Christmas Market Attack, Netflix And The NFL
Oh, there's huge upside for the NFL. All of the sports leagues have been praying and trying to cajole Netflix into coming in and being a serious bidder for these rights. Because if Netflix comes in to be a serious bidder for these rights, it's like buying a house. If you get more than one bidder, the prices are going to go up.
Up First from NPR
Government Shutdown Averted, German Christmas Market Attack, Netflix And The NFL
And what you have now is that you have NFL packages that all of the broadcast networks have, that Amazon has. If they get one more bidder involved that could say like, oh, you know what? I want to take Monday Night Football off of ESPN. And that bidder has deep pockets like Netflix. Sports rights are going to continue to soar.
Up First from NPR
Government Shutdown Averted, German Christmas Market Attack, Netflix And The NFL
You know, you mentioned the NFL. Imagine being a New York Yankees fan and you need to get Roku. You need to get Apple TV Plus. You need to get Amazon Prime. You need to get a cable subscription to watch it on Yes Network. All the leagues know that fans are getting disenfranchised by having these games going across so many different outlets like that.
Up First from NPR
Government Shutdown Averted, German Christmas Market Attack, Netflix And The NFL
Right now, there's still a little bit of a testing mode. So yeah, you're going to have to get a Netflix subscription if you want to watch every single NFL game, in addition to cable, in addition to Amazon, in addition to there was an exclusive game on Peacock as well. There's this exclusive game on ESPN+. That is going to change eventually, I would assume.
Up First from NPR
Government Shutdown Averted, German Christmas Market Attack, Netflix And The NFL
There are going to be a lot of headlines about this deal saying, here comes Netflix. But really, this is still kind of dabbling in sports to me. Netflix had the opportunity to get a significant NBA package, and it declined to do that because that wasn't going to be a couple of hundred million dollars like the Women's World Cup, right? That was going to be an investment in the billions of dollars.
Up First from NPR
Government Shutdown Averted, German Christmas Market Attack, Netflix And The NFL
And they're not quite ready to make that sort of statement yet. But you certainly see where the trend line is going. And when the next batch of rights are up by the end of this decade, which is when Major League Baseball rights are up, the NFL is going to potentially be up in 2029, 2030. This is a step toward then to where we'll be looking to see if Netflix gets really serious or not.
Up First from NPR
Government Shutdown Averted, German Christmas Market Attack, Netflix And The NFL
That was fun. Thank you for having me.