To serve the increasing demand for NFL football in Europe, an enhanced NFL Game Pass subscription service was introduced across Europe prior to the start of the 2017 season.
The service, brought to Europe by Overtier, an over-the-top content venture by Bruin Sports Capital and WPP, includes all NFL games with real-time statistics, streamable on up to five devices. The multi-device streaming was a critical component of the enhanced content offering.
“We surveyed 5,100 GamePass subscribers across Europe and we spoke to many in the U.K. and Germany, and we tried to build up an understanding of what they love about any existing services they used, and also what they were looking for in the next generation of GamePass,” Sam Jones, the CEO of Overtier, said in a phone interview.
The service also includes NFL RedZone, the popular subscription channel that shows scoring highlights of every NFL game and is used widely by fantasy football players. Whereas in America, RedZone subscribers use the channel to check if their top running backs and wide receivers have immediate scoring potential, European subscribers use it as an access point to the sport because of its ability to show the most exciting moments in each game.
“RedZone is huge for us, and it is a very significant entry point and access point to the NFL across all our markets, and fantasy football is also a significant activity over here.”
NFL Game Pass in Europe also includes shows and series around football. NFL Films productions A Football Life, which airs on NFL Network, and Hard Knocks, which airs on HBO, are part of the package, giving Europe’s NFL fan base a look into the lives of NFL players, coaches and teams that normal games don’t provide.
A unique feature of the package that is not available to American football fans is Game in 40, a super-condensed version of any 2017 NFL game that includes coaches’ films and compresses a football game into the span of a quick train ride.
Overall, though, Jones realizes that in growing the footprint of NFL GamePass, there are different levels of fandom that exist in a continent still largely devoted to soccer — or what Europeans might consider real football. Still, he said, there is an NFL fan presence in major European markets.
“We recognize that there are different degrees of NFL fandom across Europe, and people have different ways of accessing and interacting with the NFL — live games, video-on-demand, fantasy football, social — and we are absolutely putting all of those in our product,” Jones said. “We’re lucky that the NFL has a real interest in Europe, and in most of the major European markets we deal with, but there is a strong, established NFL community in our market.
“Europeans love and cherish American football really in just the same way that Americans, or American fans do. We’re really lucky that ultimately the NFL is not just a sport, it’s an experience.”