Amazon to charge $2.8m for NFL ad packages
Amazon is aiming to charge $2.8m for adverting packages around its live streams of NFL Thursday Night Football.
Amazon will show 10 Thursday Night Football games this coming season
The e-commerce giant paid $50m for the rights to show 10 NFL Thursday night games for the upcoming season and is now selling 10 to 30-second commercial blocks to advertisers for around $2.8m, according to Reuters' sources.
"We are offering a range of options at various price points, depending on advertiser objectives," said Amazon’s senior manager of corporate communications, Kristin Mariani.
The spots will run on the live stream while local ads will air on network TV. The packages are higher than the $550,000 to $590,000 that NBC and CBS reportedly charge for their on-air national ads, however Amazon is also offering buyers the chance to run ads on Amazon.com throughout the football season. National spots run by network broadcasters will also be shown on the live-stream.
Its pricing appears to be lower than Twitter's, which charged advertisers between $2m to $8m for ad packages which included the live streams of the games as well as spots on NFL highlights.
The advertising and broadcasting industries will be closely watching the developments around the games as Amazon embarks on its first high-profile push into live sports having taken over from Twitter, which paid $10m to stream Thursday night games last season.
The live streamed games, which will use NBC and CBS television broadcast feeds, will only be available to subscribers to Amazon Prime service, which costs $99 per-year and includes access to its fast shipping and free video content.
Twitter maintained its Thursday Night Football experiment went despite initial figures for the opening game garnering 2.3 million streams globally, a fraction of the 15.4 million average which watched the game on the CBS and NFL Network.
The numbers rose throughout the season though, ranging between 2.6 to 3.1m. Some advertisers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were underwhelmed by the numbers, while the likes of Anheuser-Busch and Verizon said they were extremely excited to be in on the innovation which was redefining how fans consume live sports.
Twitter may have lost out to Amazon for the live rights to Thursday night Football, however the social media platform agreed a new deal with the NFL to stream official NFL video and other content to fans year-round, including a new 30-minute live show that will air weeknights on Twitter.