You won’t be watching live NFL games on
Facebook anytime soon.
The social media giant has decided not to bid on streaming rights for next season’s slate of “Thursday Night Football” games, according to Bloomberg,
Facebook has been a bidder for those games in the past.
This season Amazon streamed the games, while last year Twitter won those rights. Final decisions on next year's rights owner will be made by the end of February.
Still, while Facebook is bowing
out of the NFL realm, the recent hiring of Peter Hutton, who
will soon step
down as CEO of Eurosport,
Europe’s largest sports cable channel, suggests Facebook has major ambitions for live sports.
Facebook could be poised to snap up
worldwide rights to various sporting events, many of which may be available for a fraction of the price of U.S. NFL games.
Those sports could serve as a testing ground for live
sports on the social network, leading to bigger deals in North America or Europe down the line.
Facebook’s tweak to its news feed this month may be poised to hit publishers hard, but it could be a boon to its own products, including
its Watch video service, and, indeed, potential live sporting events.
Sports, after all, lure passionate fans, many of whom share posts about the topic with friends.