Facebook May Stream NFL Games

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 12:15PM EST · Published Mar 8, 6:52AM EST

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Facebook May Stream NFL Games — © Thinkstock

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) will join traditional portals such as Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) in a bid to stream NFL games. The effort to bring fans online is in its infancy, so none of the companies racing to secure rights to the games may be successful.

According to Variety:

Facebook is breaking its silence on its newfound interest in signing up content partners ranging from individual celebrities to sports leagues like the NFL to dramatically pump up the amount of live video pulsing over its platform.

In an interview Monday with Variety, Dan Rose, Facebook’s VP of partnerships, confirmed the social-media giant is in discussions with the NFL about securing rights to live-stream games and has reached out to Hollywood agents to bring actors, athletes, music artists and others into its live-streaming fold.

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The article said Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) are also interested, which makes the number of companies that can afford the programs crowded.

What remains to be seen is whether consumers will move away from their TV sets and the well-known analysts and commentators who are such a big part of current NFL broadcasts. If any of the companies doing the streaming are successful enough, perhaps they will offer employment contracts to the likes of Phil Simms.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.