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Eagles Fans Will Be Able to Watch the Black Friday Game Against the Bears for Free, from Timbuktu to Delco
By Kyle Pagan
Published:
The Eagles are playing the Bears on Black Friday and Amazon Prime Video just cut a broadcast deal to show the game in every single country around the world* whether you have a Prime subscription or not:
I’ve been trying to tell you the Eagles are a global brand. Screw America’s Team, this is the World’s Team. Get ready to learn Tush Push, Iceland.
Isn’t it funny with a couple signatures here and agreements there these trillion-dollar companies can give us our sports for free? I always laugh at the YouTube game during Week 1 between the Chiefs and Chargers. These CEOs sitting up in their boardrooms in the sky just letting us know if they wanted to they could give sports away for free. I had plenty of friends with cable not realize the game was on YouTube NOT YouTubeTV because we’ve become ingrained to believe that companies would never not charge us to watch football. We just assume they’re all spending a boat load just to have exclusive rights so they can build subscription numbers and pray you forget to cancel. Forgetting all this time they can just make sports free. What a world. Give the addict a little taste so they come back for more.
I think the future of the NFL is so interesting. They don’t care about you or I anymore. They’ve got us hook, line, and sinker. I’m going to watch my team and seven hours of commercial-free football every single Sunday. I’m going to pore over the NFL Film content they release during the week. We are in the palm of their hand. The next target is world domination and it’s no secret. Roger Goodell wants a game internationally every single week. The Vikings actually wanted to play back-to-back weeks overseas because the owners knew the financial opportunity. It’s great to grow the game, but the people who are going to get screwed is us and the broadcast networks and you already see it with the product this season. The NFL used to send crap teams like the Jaguars over every year. Now they have a premiere game overseas to cater to those fans and Fox or CBS ends up getting left with a game like Jets vs. Panthers in the 1pm window or a crappy America’s Game of the Week. So now they’re screwing over their broadcast partners that pay billions of dollars so that they can gobble up more global market share. Same thing with the Monday Night Football doubleheader, which I believe is going away next year when the NFL is officially invested in ESPN. I think MNF doubleheaders are stupid. I want to watch as much football as possible. Why do I have to now watch two games that overlap each other on a day that ESPN already owns? Obviously the Mouse loves having both because that’s more ad revenue to sell, but if you were in the Chicago area this week watching Lions/Bucs the game started at 6 p.m. and if you were in Philly the Seahawks/Texans game didn’t finish until 1:30am. That’s a shitty experience for football fans.
And this is all before you realize private equity and Saudi investment in teams is right around the corner. How long until the Super Bowl is in the Middle East? A decade? College Football is exploring moving a bowl game to Saudi Arabia already. Hell, football commissioners would put a game on the moon if they could. We’re going to be watching the Super Bowl in five years at 1:30pm because the NFL awarded it to London and you’re going to like it. Enjoy the last “pure” moments of watching football. First it’s advertisements on RedZone, next it’s Merrill Reese doing Visit Riyadh ads when the Eagles get into the RedZone.
I hope every country enjoys the Black Friday game!* Unless you’re Canada. This is payback for Danny Watkins, from Mike Florio at ProFootballTalk.com:
Amazon has announced that the Week 13 Black Friday Bears-Eagles will stream globally at no charge, putting it on par with the Week 1 Chiefs-Chargers game from Brazil, which was streamed for free on YouTube.
There’s an important caveat to the term “globally.” A note at the bottom of the press release states that the game will not be available “in Canada and certain other countries.” Which would tend to undercut, to some extent, the notion that it will be available “globally.”
Kyle writes blog posts and does Man on the Street-style videos all around Philadelphia. He graduated from Temple University (a basketball school) in 2015. contact: k.pagan@sportradar.com