Google, Apple Could Stream Midseason NFL Game Nationally; League Also Lifts Blackouts
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) —The National Football League will lift its restrictions on blackouts for the 2015 season, and it will accept bids for a digital platform to broadcast a game nationally for the first time.
The week 7 London game between the Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars will be available online nationally. Who will broadcast the game is still up in the air, as the league will accept bids. A clear frontrunner for the rights is a service like Google's YouTube, though Apple is rumored to be making inroads on its own cable-like service, and has recently locked up an exclusivity period for HBO Now.
Local markets in Buffalo and Jacksonville will still be able to watch the London game, which airs at 6:30 a.m. PST on Oct. 25.
After a season with no blackouts, the NFL will remove the restrictions that have been in place since 1973 for a season. Before this move, the NFL was the only league that required local teams to sell out 72 hours before a game was broadcast. If the game did not sell out, the game would be blacked out locally.
The NFL has taken steps in recent years to combat the problem of local games being blacked out. In 2012, the league eased the sell out restriction to teams only having to sell 85 percent of game tickets. Since that move, only the Raiders, the Cincinnati Bengals, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the San Diego Chargers and the Buffalo Bills have had games blacked out.
The last NFL blackout in the Sacramento market was in 2012 by the Oakland Raiders. The team lowered its stadium capacity by 10,000 seats and has not been blacked out since.
The last blackout for the San Francisco 49ers was in 1981, the year of the team's first Super Bowl win.
