With the super bowl having wrapped up a stunning display of gridiron action over the ‘21-’22 season, ardent fans are already eagerly anticipating the NHL’s return to our screens and our lives in the coming autumn. As we pore over the final standings of the winter play-offs, and contemplate what the NHL will look like without the familiar feature of Tom Brady, we have some questions to explore about what we can expect from ‘22-’23.
The world is abuzz with talk of all-access streaming, and innovative new technologies such as NFTs. In such a climate, we endeavour to ask: what changes are likely to be implemented behind the scenes to the game’s game’s performance and presented next year?
On-Demand Smartphone Content
One trend that has been building over the past few years is a proliferation of officially supported streaming platforms bringing all the action in the NFL seamlessly to our smart devices. Those stateside are virtually spoiled for choice now with a range of top quality broadcasters offering up complimentary apps as part of their existing cable packages.
Fox customers can now catch Thursday night football as part of the comprehensive mobile service, Fox Sports, and NBC similarly offer up Sunday night games on their own sports app.
For those who don’t want to miss a beat, ESPN’s WatchESPN service serves up a range of quality NFL content as well as keeping its subscribers in the loop with respect to all the latest in college football.
Any run down of the strides being made in delivering nail biting football to your smartphone will be incomplete without drawing attention to the stellar work being done by the NFL itself in the form of its NFL Mobile app.
This fully-featured program serves as an all-in-one football hub for fans, with news feeds, post-game analysis and highlight reels sharing space with free audio replays of Thursday, Sunday and Monday night football.
What’s more, if you subscribe to the platform you get access to live broadcast games and on-demand video replays. In a bid to make the NFL Mobile app the one platform to rule them all, it even features its own fantasy football league for you to participate in as the season progresses.
We can expect big things from this service next season, as it is increasingly refined and optimised for fans.
NFT Take-over
NFT was the tech-buzz watch-word of 2021, and 2022 is the year we can expect to see the trend take over every corner of the modern media landscape. NFTs offer something hitherto unprecedented: a way to take digital content and apply scarcity and value to them. Sports has seen enthusiastic adoption of this concept, building on the long running pedigree of the fan-driven sports memorabilia market.
The NBA was the first major league to take strides towards building out its own official NFT store. Called NBA Top Shot, it offers fans the opportunity to purchase iconic video clips of classic games, and to own them privately. The NFL wasn’t far behind, and in late 2021 unveiled its own NFT store, named NFL All Day.
As the ‘22-’23 season will be the first to fully take place in a “post-NFT” world, we can expect enthusiastic promotion of the new marketplace as part of next year’s sports media coverage.
Next season’s triumphant touchdowns and trailblazing runs will also become immortalised as some of the hottest new NFT property money can buy. We can also expect to see a significant crossover between NFTs and the NFL’s premier video game franchise, EA Sports’ Madden series.
EA has already been making waves in the games industry for pioneering the uptake of NFT exclusive items inside its games, and we can expect the next Madden title to take the ball and run with this.
