Oof. That was the sound of Detroit Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh laying out another quarterback. It may also be the sound that cable and satellite TV executives made last week when they heard news that Google is talking to the NFL about buying the rights to the NFLSunday Ticket package, and that ESPN has been talking directly to several online video players (likely including Apple) about licensing ESPN shows.
The Detroit Lions' Ndamukong Suh.
This news comes just a couple of months after another scary hit on the cable and satellite operators—when Verizon announced it would be delivering live, home-market pro football games to its smartphone customers, through a $1 billion deal it made directly with the National Football League.
Direct content deals between powerful sports leagues and Silicon Valley upstarts could produce career-ending injuries for the Comcasts and DirectTVs of the world, since their businesses depend in large part on long-held sports broadcasting rights agreements.
In fact, we might be witnessing the beginning of the end of Monday Night Football as we know it. Ten years from now, NFL games—TV's biggest cash cow—might come riding into the living room on a broadband pipe (maybe wired, maybe wireless), and not via a cable or satellite link.
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