MS deal with NFL supposedly cost $400 Million

By +Audioboxer
in Xbox

 Share

Recommended Posts

Grand Master

+Audioboxer Subscriber²

Posted
  • Subscriber²
Posted
The NFL and Microsoft, through its next generation Xbox device, are combining to upgrade interactive TV viewing of pro football games in a multiyear agreement announced Tuesday. The next step after that, perhaps as early as 2014, will be bringing technology to the sidelines on tablets.

The deal is worth $400 million over five years for the NFL, according to a person familiar with the agreement. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because financial details have not been made public.

"When you think about the sidelines, what is most important for us is how you make the game of football better, make what the coaches and players do better, using technology but preserving the competition," said Brian Rolapp, chief operating officer of NFL Media. "The challenge is how to bring technology to make it a better experience for them and for the fans.

"You can start with how we communicate with each other, whether it's game officials or coaches. Coaches can look at formations as they develop. We'll look at how do you do the still photos better, get more into real time? Is there a more efficient way to give replay officials a way of doing reviews better through technology?"

That's for the future, albeit the not-too-distant future.

Fans will get new television viewing innovations, including the ability to watch games, Skype video chat with other fans, view statistics, access highlights in real time and gather fantasy information about players and teams -- all on a single screen. For those who prefer multiple screens, fans can get an even deeper experience on mobile devices and tablets with SmartGlass technology.

Source: http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap1000000205083/article/nfl-microsoft-strike-deal-to-enhance-fans-tv-viewing-of-games

Veteran

spudtrooper

Posted
Posted

Sounds like a great value

a little demographics shows a lot of potential business:

http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Issues/2010/06/Issue-185/The-Back-Of-The-Book/Fan-Demographics-Among-Major-North-American-Sports-Leagues.aspx

Don't the big players pay billions for lesser rights? it sounds like a pretty good mutual deal. Money on the tablet from Microsoft and the NFL can now get data about its viewers it only dreamed of.

Grand Master

Astra.Xtreme

Posted
Posted

If you don't live in the United States (I do), you simply cannot fathom how popular the NFL is.

Even though the NFL is really popular here, it's nothing compared to the worldwide popularity of soccer (football).

Certain countries literally live and die for it.

Veteran

spudtrooper

Posted
Posted

Even though the NFL is really popular here, it's nothing compared to the worldwide popularity of soccer (football).

Certain countries literally live and die for it.

Who says they're stopping with the NFL?

They already have ESPN, MLB and now UFC.. I fully expect them to keep on going.

Grand Master

Astra.Xtreme

Posted
Posted

Who says they're stopping with the NFL?

They already have ESPN, MLB and now UFC.. I fully expect them to keep on going.

I don't believe anybody said they are stopping with the NFL.

MS is an American company, so it's not really surprising they are first focusing on American sports.

But if they want to gain worldwide support for these new features, they are going to have to spend a lot of time developing for other popular sports.

Proficient

notchinese

Posted
Posted

Even though the NFL is really popular here, it's nothing compared to the worldwide popularity of soccer (football).

Certain countries literally live and die for it.

In terms of money though, the NFL is the most profitable sports league in the world I believe, and it also has the highest average per-team value of any league.

Grand Master

Atomic Wanderer Chicken

Posted
Posted

Microsoft blew errr spent $400,000,000 on a sports partnership and not on research and development to improve its products?

Veteran

spudtrooper

Posted
Posted

Microsoft blew errr spent $400,000,000 on a sports partnership and not on research and development to improve its products?

What are you talking about? Microsoft has spent billions on improving its products. HD is done, that was so 2005. Today its about interactive gaming and content. The ability for a game to run on the cloud and change dynamically as you play is probably going to be one of the best breakthrough features MS announced.

Grand Master

Atomic Wanderer Chicken

Posted
Posted

What are you talking about? Microsoft has spent billions on improving its products. HD is done, that was so 2005. Today its about interactive gaming and content. The ability for a game to run on the cloud and change dynamically as you play is probably going to be one of the best breakthrough features MS announced.

That was just an example. I am not a big fan of football, and think money could have been better spent elsewhere, not on sports. How about a partnership with Nasa or something that can have both educational and entertainment value.

Grand Master

neufuse Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

And which is why I loathe it. :rolleyes:

gawd sports in the USA drive me nuts, especially when there is an NFL or hockey game on... go out somewhere all you get is "DUDE! WHERE IS YOUR JERSEY!!!!!!!!" um maybe I don't give a crap about who's playing? which then turns into you being a loser because you are "supporting your local team" blah blah blah....

This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

  • Posts

    • Secure Boot

      By cork1958 · Posted

      Simple answer is yes, you will still get the Windows updates and as long as browser is up to date, you will be good. Only thing secure boot does is protect you against boot level threats and make it harder to install other OS's. I've been looking into this pretty thoroughly lately myself as wifes computer has secure boot disabled plus my other, older computers that run Linux, don't have secure boot enabled. Have seen all kinds of questions about this on the Linux Mint and MX Linux forums. Just don't suddenly enable secure boot now.
    • Ford execs say they made a mistake when they replaced human engineers with AI

      By TsarNikky · Posted

      How many other companies will follow Ford's lead? Or, have they already gotten lazy and become enslaved to AI--and now can't figure out how to get out of that mess.
    • The Trump administration doesn't want you to use OpenAI's GPT-5.6 without its approval

      By TsarNikky · Posted

      Why would any self-respecting intelligent person follow any recommendation by Donald's GOP administration? With almost two years of fabrications, deceit, and blatantly illegal behavior, why believe them now? They had best be gone after the November 2026 election, so we'll wait and see.
    • AltSendme 0.4.1

      By Copernic · Posted

      AltSendme 0.4.1 by Razvan Serea AltSendme is a minimal, cross-platform application designed for fast, secure, and private peer-to-peer file transfers. It allows users to send files or entire directories directly between devices without relying on cloud servers, accounts, or any personal information. Everything is encrypted end-to-end using modern protocols like QUIC and TLS 1.3, ensuring both strong security and low-latency performance. Transfers are verified with BLAKE3 for data integrity, and interrupted downloads automatically resume, making the experience reliable even on unstable connections. You can transfer anything—images, videos, documents, and more. Integrity checks are performed on both ends, so your files are automatically verified for correctness during both sending and receiving. AltSendme works seamlessly across local networks or long-distance links, capable of saturating multi-gigabit connections for extremely fast delivery. With built-in NAT traversal and encrypted relay fallback, it connects devices almost anywhere. The app integrates with the Sendme CLI and will soon support mobile and web platforms. Fully free and open-source, AltSendme offers a lightweight, privacy-first alternative to traditional cloud-based services, removing size limits, upload costs, and unnecessary data exposure. AltSendme 0.4.1 changelog: Release Highlights Self-hosted relays: Run your own iroh relay so transfers don't rely on public infrastructure. Includes a full deployment template in deploy/relay/ with Docker Compose for a VPS and configuration examples for production use. Fly.io support: One-click deploy template for Fly.io, including a quick-start config (fly.dev.toml) for testing without a custom domain, plus production setup with Let's Encrypt and your own hostname. Relay settings UI: New Settings → Network panel to choose how AltSendme connects: automatic public relays, custom self-hosted URLs (with optional auth token), or disabled. Test connections, verify latency, and see live relay status in the footer. Disable relays: Turn off relay servers entirely when you only need same-network transfers (e.g. LAN). Direct connections only. No relay hop required when devices can reach each other. Android graduates from beta: Android is now part of the regular release cycle alongside desktop. APKs ship with each version (universal, arm64, and armv7). Other improvements Private relay access control via shared auth token Relay fallback notifications when a custom relay is unreachable Broadcast mode toggle in sharing settings Android release build fixes (split-per-ABI APKs, universal APK preservation) UI polish: mobile safe-area insets, dropzone layout, transfer progress animation Bug fixes for minification-related serialization issues and system tray icon loading What's Changed feat(relay): add relay status functionality and settings UI (a120cdf) feat(relay): implement custom relay server configuration and verification (51276c7) feat(relay): add configuration for private relay access and enhance observability features (48fbabf) feat(relay): enhance relay URL validation, display connection status (d4fffa0) feat(relay): add RelayChangeGuard component and enhance relay-related translations (16ba514) feat(broadcast): add toggle setting for broadcast mode in sharing UI (ca6d977) fix(relay): correct QUIC discovery port, pin image, templatize fly.dev (52a2ba5) fix: More broken serialization due to minification (67491a9) fix(android): preserve true universal APK across per-ABI builds (e9f256f) fix(ui): conditional safe-area insets padding on mobile (1182f0e) refactor(transfer): CircularRing component animation fix (944572b) chore(android): drop x86 and x86_64 release APKs, keep universal+arm64+armv7 (34ada0b) Download: AltSendme 0.4.1 | ARM64 | ~9.0 MB (Open Source) Download: AltSendme for MacOS | Android Links: AltSendme Home Page | GitHub | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • Why Delta Chat is the best decentralized messenger you have probably never tried

      By zikalify · Posted

      You are mostly right about the ephemeral nature of it. As I mention in the article, if you dont add a second device or take a backup of your account before uninstalling it, then yes you will lose access to your account. That said, in terms of actual user experience when you sync multiple devices your message history carries across and there's also a Saved Messages chat like there is on Telegram to send messages and attachments between your installs. But yh, what you point out are correct and its not trying to emulate Messenger or Telegram.

  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      flexorcist earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Woland13 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Woland13 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Year In
      bernmeister earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Week One Done
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Week One Done

  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      495
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      225
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      150
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      75
    5. 5
      FloatingFatMan
      71
    Show More

  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!