UK, US Have Different Game Plans for Declining Sports Viewing

U.K. and U.S. sports programming rights holders face a similar problem of declining viewership but are taking different steps, nScreenMedia's Colin Dixon blogged Tuesday. He said Sky -- facing a big drop in Premier League viewers -- is repackaging premium sports by creating sports-themed channels and making sports watching more affordable for viewers whose primary interest is just one or two sports. Neither the NFL nor programming rights holders "seem ready to act as decisively as Sky," he said. The NFL is reducing the number of advertising breaks, but the total number of ads won't change, he said, saying games remain unavailable via virtual MVPD or broadcaster apps since Verizon Wireless owns those exclusive rights. Dixon said last year's Twitter experiment with Thursday night games "was a start in the right step," but subsequently selling the rights to those games to Amazon Prime "seems like a retrograde step." The NFL didn't comment Wednesday.