When it comes to watching television without the aid of a cable subscription or rabbit ears, the Web is pretty accommodating these days. Most popular shows stream new episodes within 24 hours and even many live television events can be streamed online. One of the biggest deal killers for would-be “cord cutters,” however has always been live sports. If you’re a huge football fan, for example, there’s no way around it: you need TV the old fashioned way.
That’s still largely the case, but watching the year’s biggest sporting event via the Internet just got a whole lot easier. The Super Bowl, which is the most-watched television broadcast in the United States, will be streamed live to computers and smartphones, the NFL announced today.
NBC and the NFL will both stream a high-definition quality broadcast of the game online with alternative camera angles, DVR-style controls and other interactive features.
In addition to being accessible on the desktop Web, the stream will be available via Verizon’s NFL Mobile app, which is available on both iOS and Android.
It’s not the first sporting event to be streamed live, but its certainly the biggest. If the networks ever wanted an opportunity to give large-scale live streaming a test run, this would be a pretty good one.
The Super Bowl attracts over 100 million viewers, most of whom will have no problem sitting around the television set per usual to watch the game. If anything, making it available online will expand the audience and may even offer the networks some interesting viewership statistics and a few takeaways about the future of television.
