NFL Media, Hulu strike streaming deal

NFL Media and Hulu struck a new multi-year carriage agreement to bring the NFL Network and NFL RedZone to Hulu's live TV subscription streaming service Hulu + Live TV.

The NFL Network and NFL RedZone will be available to Hulu + Live TV subscribers by August 1, just in time for the 2021 NFL season. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Hans Schroeder, chief operating officer of NFL Media, said in a statement, "One of our top priorities as a league remains broadening the distribution platforms for NFL content."

Today’s news follows last month's long-term media distribution agreements secured by the NFL.

In March, Amazon came away with an exclusive streaming deal for Thursday Night Football beginning with the 2023 season and running through 2033. When that contract begins, Amazon Prime Video will be the only place to watch Thursday Night Football.

The NFL also reached new distribution deals in March with ABC/ESPN, CBS, Fox and NBC. And all of those agreements have streaming components built in.

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Charlie Neiman, head of sports partnerships at Amazon Prime Video spoke at FierceVideo’s Stream TV Sports Summit yesterday. He said, “The consistency of having Thursday Night Football on Amazon every week is going to be great for us. We will see numbers that are going to be more in line with what you’d call traditional linear ratings. And this audience will be all at once, not the on-demand viewership of a lot of Prime Video content: You have to watch it live."

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Blake Stuchin, NFL vice president for digital media business development, said at the Stream TV Sports Summit that the organization's streaming deals won’t end the NFL’s tradition of making each team’s games available on local TV too. “It’s really important to us that those games continue to be there,” Stuchin said.