Last fall Yahoo streamed a Jaguars vs. Bills game in London that reportedly achieved 15.2 million unique viewers. Today, Yahoo decided to build off this digital success by announcing a deal with the National Hockey League where it will deliver live, out-of-market games for free.
Get The Latest Sports Tech News In Your Inbox!
Starting tomorrow, March 11th, U.S. fans will be able to stream the NHL “Game of the Day” up to four days a week. Additionally, in game highlights will be provided during each of these games as well as “Best of the Day” and “Best of the Week” top plays and postgame highlights.
This deal will end when the 2016-17 regular season is over.
The first Game of the Day stream will be the matchup tomorrow between the Flyers and the Tampa Bay Lightning.
By continuing with streaming live sports, Yahoo is making a push to draw in the coveted millennial market with their transitioning viewing habits. Yahoo is also hoping that going this route with streaming will help their overall business be more attractive to private equity investors as they are reportedly entertaining sales prospects.
Yahoo’s successful NFL stream in 2015 helped set the foundation for more streaming partnerships with the PGA, MLB and eSports. So this NHL deal is a logical progression for this strategy.
As Phil Lynch, Yahoo’s VP of media partnerships told Variety, “This alliance brings us one step closer to providing fans a live professional sporting event every day, on Yahoo, completely frictionless and for free — no cable subscription or authentication required.”