Yahoo to live-stream October 25 NFL game

The U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds aerial demonstration team flies over the stadium during ceremonies ahead of the start of the NFL Super Bowl XLIX football game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots in Glendale, Arizona February 1, 2015. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By Sai Sachin R (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc will broadcast the Oct. 25 National Football League game between the Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars in London in the first live-stream of an NFL game. The International Series game will be streamed exclusively free of charge on Yahoo sites including Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Screen and Tumblr, Yahoo and the NFL said on Wednesday. Yahoo and the NFL did not disclose terms of the deal. Technology news site Re/code, however, reported that Yahoo paid at least $20 million for the streaming rights, citing industry executives familiar with the negotiations. Yahoo will have exclusive advertising rights to the game, which will also be available in a 30-minute on-demand version, Senior Vice President of product and engineering Adam Cahan said in an interview. The on-demand version will include commercials that viewers would not be able to skip. Yahoo was hopeful of more such partnerships in the future, Cahan said. The company has been trying to fight stalling revenue growth by turning towards video ads as its once-hot Web portal and email service lag those of rivals such as Google Inc. It bought automated advertising service BrightRoll for $640 million in November, saying the deal would make its video ad platform the largest in the United States. The Oct. 25 game will also be telecast in the Buffalo (WIVB-TV) and Jacksonville (WTEV-TV) markets. A decision on whether the NFL will partner with streaming service providers for future games has not been made, spokesman Alex Reithmiller said. "This is a first step ... taking this first step is a signal that there will probably be other steps to come," he said. (Additional reporting by Narottam Medhora and Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Joyjeet Das)