While baseball is supposedly the national past time of the American
sporting public, a very good case could be made that NFL football is
the most popular sports league in the United States. Forget the fact
that networks pay billions to broadcast games, the NFL draft regularly
has more viewership then the championship games of most sports. In fact,
while they say that the Super Bowl is a national holiday, you could
argue that it is the American holiday: no matter what race, creed or
religion you are, chances are you are tuning into at least part of the
game, even if it is just for the commercials. Fans live football.
Because of this utter devotion it only makes sense that the next big
leap for the NFL is live games on the internet.For a while,
sports didn't quiet know what to do with the internet. While most
leagues kept a website and some intriguing content on there, the idea of
broadcasting games live online didn't exactly seem to be high on their
priority level. There are a lot of things that need to be considered
with live broadcasts online: television rights, sponsors, cable
companies, the players association, owners, and, of course, league
interests. The NFL makes a lot of money on it's broadcasts and these
types of issues take a long time to work out.While it may be in
it's infancy, the NFL has slowly started to jump onto the internet
broadcasting bandwagon. While it's still a small amount of games
considering the full schedule, the NFL has allowed broadcasters like NBC
show their games online. There are even apps that, for a price, you can
watch full games from your laptop or phone. While it's a start, you are
unlikely to see a huge jump in free internet streaming thanks to
current contracts which give cable and satellite providers exclusive
package deals. These package deals, which fans can order for up to $50 a
month, are currently the only way to watch NFL football games from all
broadcast feeds at the same time.If they allow free streaming
games then the NFL and cable companies lose this revenue. One day it
will happen though. Every time that the NFL negotiates new television
contracts (which occurs every four or five years), they make more and
more content available online. While you shouldn't hold your breath for a
full schedule, expect to see more and more games each year.