What can the NFL (and TV) learn from startups?

I have watched the whole wild card round of the NFL this weekend. That means I spent 14 hours watching NFL. After some rest (you cannot imagine the fatigue) I jumped into a couple conclusions in regard of what I think can be done by sports teams or the league to to make the experience even more enjoyable.

What the NFL is missing

During the NFL games you get a ton of TV ads and I mean A LOT. From what I calculated you are watching ads for 1:30 hours and watching the game for another 1:30. Man, if 50/50 is not depressive enough you could get into even more specifics and assume that the players are actually playing for 11 minutes but for me 1:30 hours of game, replays and commentary it’s ok.

ads ads ads

First thing that I would love is shorter games. Bring the ads during the plays or something but please make the games 2 hours at most. To be honest the only thrilling part of the games was the last 5 minutes of the 4th Quarter which translate to something like 20 minutes or real-life time because of the ads.

Second, some kind of explanation for the plays the teams are doing as they play. Perhaps a companion app to see the plays and understand a bit more how and why the game is developing the way it is. To this date I have no idea what is a Nickel formation or what does the 3–4 defensive scheme means and I have heard about those terms for years.

Possible course of action

Third, a rulebook because I still don’t get several flags of some games and I have seen football games for over 15 years.

Fourth, a social network or community based on each team for their supporters. I mean you get the fan pages but it’s not the same feeling you get getting the main content coming from the brand itself other than by fans and for fans. Right now the attention gets lost between the fan page of the team and each of the stars and main players of the team. I acknowledge the existence of fantasy football leagues and groups but in this case I would love to have insights from global followers of my team about the game or a place to get into intelectual debates (funny pictures) of what is happening during the game.

Fifth, NFL should just release different streams options for the whole season of my team because no doubt I would pay to get that directly on my tv or Chromecast. I am in Mexico and not able to attend the matches so often but would gladly pay for the whole season stream of my team. What they do right now with NFL Now is a good start but I don’t see why that is not part of their YouTube channel. The live part of that does not attract me at all.

NFL Now (meh)

Sixth, NFL get premium ads I get that. In fact the ads they get are so good that if they just popped a “Buy it now” button I would certainly press it more than a couple times since the ads are so good and relevant (to me). I would have bought a videogame, and a speaker this sunday if they gave me the chance to do it with my remote. Probably they would need to get it as a stream on multimedia devices as tv and Chromecast. Once they have solved that they are for sure getting my money to the people that advertise with them.

Conclusions

After arriving to some of these ideals I get now that TV is going to be changed forever with new releases of streams and it is going to be the perfect marketplace the moment someone gets the buy button in there because of the supreme placement they can get. Communities are kind of isolated too because here in Mexico there seems to be a Steelers/Cowboys fan around each corner (they are the most popular NFL teams in the country) and I’m sure they could be empowered to do so much more through the internet and social interactions online. They do not need to get a lot of games in mexican territory to get our money because they already have our attention every single weekend, and I am positive that must be the case in several other countries other than USA.