Report: NFL to launch new streaming service in July

There are a few different ways that you can stream NFL games and other facets of the product, and it appears that the shield is finally going to get in on the action for itself.

According to Sports Business Journal, the NFL is launching a brand new streaming service, NFL Plus, this July. The price is rumored to be around $5 a month for the service. In addition to live games, the app will likely include things such as podcasts and other team-related content.

Now, lest we think this is going to be a replacement for the NFL Sunday Ticket package that has been a part of DirecTV for a number of years, it doesn’t appear that’s the case. . .not yet, anyway. While the streaming service will include live games, those games will be limited to the games that you would receive in your local market. So, if our Minnesota Vikings were playing in a prime-time game on a particular weekend, people in the Twin Cities area would still be able to get whatever games were being aired locally in those time slots.

(That’s my understanding of it, anyway.)

DirecTV has the rights to the Sunday Ticket package through this season, but it’s apparently up for bids, with Apple and Amazon being rumored to potentially be interested. NFL Plus could potentially be folded into that, according to the SBJ article, but obviously we’re a long way off from knowing exactly how that would be the case.

With any luck, this could serve as an entry for a way to allow out-of-market fans to be able to purchase their team’s games on a pay-per-view basis if they weren’t interested in forking out the money for the entire Sunday Ticket package. There are plenty of people that would likely be interested in such a thing, and if the NFL thinks they can make money off of it. . .and why wouldn’t they. . .it wouldn’t be surprising to see this new NFL Plus serve as a springboard to that.

Are you hyped about the idea of NFL Plus, folks?