“Over The Top” Broadcast Could Affect Vikings

A couple of seasons ago, the National Football League streamed a game between the Buffalo Bills and the Jacksonville Jaguars from London on the Yahoo! Sports online streaming service. The stream was a success, reportedly picking up over 33 million viewers. The NFL likes the idea so much, apparently they’re going to be doing it again. . .and it could affect the Minnesota Vikings.

According to Sports Business Daily, the league apparently wants to do an “over the top” stream of one of this year’s London games, whether it’s on Yahoo! or on some other streaming service.

As we know, the Vikings will be traveling to London in either Week 8 or Week 9 to take on the Cleveland Browns, serving as the “away” team for the contest. If the league happens to choose the Vikings/Browns game as a game for streaming online, then the only people that would be able to watch it on television are the folks in the local markets for the Vikings and the Browns. At least, that’s the way it worked for the 2015 contest.

I’ll be honest. . .since I was over in Germany when the league did this, I was able to watch the game on NFL Game Pass. I’m not sure if the game will be available on the Sunday Ticket package or anything along those lines for people that are outside of those markets, but the interpretation I get from this is that it won’t be. If I’m incorrect on this, I will do something separate about it.

But, at least as far as I can tell right now, it appears that if you want to watch Vikings/Browns, you might have to look to your computer rather than to your television set.