JKraft: NFL may ‘simulcast stream' Thursday games

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FOXBORO - Soon enough, you'll be able to check your fantasy football team on one browser tab, and click on over to the next one and watch the corresponding games.

It's all part of the NFL's long-term plan to not only rule the television, but rule the internet by making their games available to stream.

And it's going to start next season on Thursday nights, as games will reportedly be made available to stream.

The NFL has already dipped into the streaming world with its games in London, but the plan is to grow that over the years.

Bidding is out for next year's Thursday Night Football package, and whichever network or company wins will be expected to allow for a stream to act as a simulcast of the television production.

Patriots President Jonathan Kraft spoke on 98.5 The Sports Hub about the streaming possibilities before Sunday's game against the Titans.

"Yeah, look, over-the-top television or streaming media coming to you on your phone or your tablet or whatever the device is directly over the internet, with people who are millennials and whatever the generation is after millennials. It's how they want to consume content. You look at the amount of time that 18 to 34-year-olds are spending on their devices consuming streamed video content, it's multiples of what they're doing in front of a television. So we have another six years to run on our TV deals and during that time we are absolutely going to experiment with trying to figure out the right way to distribute the product in conjunction with traditional broadcast television to make sure that all of our fans are being well served.

"The Thursday Night package, which is what you're hearing about, purposely was bid out on a short-term basis so that we can continue to use that as a foundation of the beta testing that's going to go on. The games are still going to be on TV. There might be a London game each year - a 9:30 am game - that would strictly, outside of the markets of the two teams that are in it, might be over the top. But that's what you're going to see and so hopefully when we get to the next round of TV deals we'll be smarter to be able to structure things in a way that fans want to consume our games. And that's the idea around it."

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