NFL's Thursday Night Football Goes Exclusive To Amazon Prime Video

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While denialism over cord-cutting is still somewhat a thing, a vastly larger segment of the public can finally see the writing on the wall. While the cable industry's first brave tactic in dealing with the cord-cutting issue was to boldly pretend as though it didn't exist, industry executives more recently realize that there is a bloodbath coming its way. There are few roadblocks that remain for a full on tsunami of cord-cutters and one of the most significant of those is still live sports broadcasting. This, of course, is something I've been screaming about on this site for years: the moment that people don't need to rely on cable television to follow their favorite sports teams live, cable will lose an insane number of subscribers.Over the past few years, the major American sports leagues have certainly inched in that direction. Notable for this post, 2017 saw the NFL ink a new streaming deal for mobile streaming with Verizon. The NFL had a long partnership with Verizon for mobile streaming already, but the notable aspect of the new deal was that NFL game streaming was suddenly not exclusive. Other streaming services could get in the game. And, while you can't draw a direct line to it, the tangential story of how the NFL just inked an exclusive deal with Amazon Prime for the broadcast rights for Thursday Night Football certainly shows you where this is all heading.

The deal runs from 2023 to 2033 and, according to a report from CNBC, will see Amazon pay $1 billion per year for the TNF package. Thursday Night Football is the NFL's newest and cheapest TV package, but the deal lets Amazon creep closer to parity with the NFL's other licensees, mainstream TV networks like Fox Sports, ABC/ESPN (Disney), CBS (Viacom), and NBC (Comcast). CNBC's report has the other four channels paying upward of $2 billion per year each, and unlike Amazon, the TV networks get to take turns airing the Super Bowl.

The NFL's new deal contains streaming provisions for the other providers, too. Each network can now simulcast their games on their streaming service, and some deals scored one or two streaming-exclusive games. Disney's ABC and ESPN games are also allowed on ESPN+, and ESPN+ will get one exclusive game per season, the London "International Series" game. NBC games can also appear on the streaming service Peacock, and Peacock is getting "an exclusive feed of a select number of NFL games." CBS can stream games on Paramount+. Fox Sports, which wasn't part of Disney's acquisition of Fox, apparently has a streaming service called "Tubi," which can now simulcast the Fox games.

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Content Moderation Case Study: Huge Surge In Users On One Server Prompts Intercession From Discord (2021)

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Summary: A wild few days for the stock market resulted in some interesting moderation moves by a handful of communications/social media platforms.A group of unassociated retail investors (i.e. day traders playing the stock market with the assistance of services like Robin Hood) gathering at the Wall Street Bets subreddit started a mini-revolution by refusing to believe Gamestop stock was worth as little as some hedge funds believed it was.The initial surge in Gamestop's stock price was soon followed by a runaway escalation, some of it a direct response to a hedge fund's large (and exposed) short position. Melvin Capital -- the hedge fund targeted by Wall Street Bets denizens -- had announced its belief Gamestop stock wasn't worth the price it was at and had put its money where its mouth was by taking a large short position that would only pay off if the stock price continued to drop.As the stock soared from less than $5/share to over $150/share, people began flooding to r/wallstreetbets. This forced the first moderation move. Moderators briefly took the subreddit private in an attempt to stem the flow of newcomers and get a handle on the issues these sort of influxes bring with them.Wall Street Bets moved some of the conversation over to Discord, which prompted another set of moderation moves. Discord banned the server, claiming users routinely violated guidelines on hate speech, incitement of violence, and spreading misinformation. This was initially viewed as another attempt to rein in vengeful retail investors who were inflicting pain on hedge funds: the Big Guys making sure the Little Guys weren't allowed on the playing field. (Melvin Capital received a $2.75 billion cash infusion after its Gamestop short was blown up by Gamestop's unprecedented rise in price.)But it wasn't as conspiratorial as it first appeared. The users who frequented a subreddit that described itself as "4chan with a Bloomberg terminal" were very abrasive and the addition of mics to the mix at the Discord server made things worse by doubling the amount of noise -- noise that often included hate speech and plenty of insensitive language.The ban was dropped and the server was re-enabled by Discord, which announced it was stepping in to more directly moderate content and users. With over 300,000 users, the server had apparently grown too large, too quickly, making it all but impossible for Wall Street Bets moderators to handle on their own. This partially reversed the earlier narrative, turning Discord into the Big Guy helping out the Little Guy, rather than allowing them to be silenced permanently due to the actions of their worst users.Decisions to be made by Discord:

• Do temporary bans harm goodwill and chase users from the platform? Is this the expected result when this happens?
• Is participating directly in moderation of heavily-trafficked servers scalable?
• How much moderation should be left in the hands of server moderators? Should they be allowed more flexibility when moderating questionable content that may violate Discord rules but is otherwise still legal?

• Are temporary bans of servers more effective than other, more scaled escalation efforts? Are changes more immediate?
• Is the fallout from bans offset by the exit of problem users? Or do server bans tend to entrench the worst users to the detriment of new users and moderators who are left to clean up the mess?
• As more users move to Discord, is the platform capable of stepping in earlier to head off developing problems before they reach the point a ban is warranted?
• Does offloading moderation to users of the service increase the possibility of rules violations? If so, should Discord take more direct control earlier when problematic content is reported?

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