The NFL is currently searching for a buyer for the digital streaming rights to its "Thursday Night Football" package next season.
In February, the pro football league sold the rights to its "Thursday Night Football" games to CBS and NBC. Now this month, the NFL intends to sell the digital rights to the same games and it should be nearing a decision soon.
According to Re/code, we can expect that Apple will not participate in this bidding war. While the NFL's Thursday night games could have helped the Apple TV stand apart from the competition, the company reportedly felt the package "isn't enough to pull that off."
The report also gave a short and incomplete list of would-be buyers which include Facebook, Amazon, Verizon and Yahoo.
To give a bit of context, NBC and CBS each paid $225 million to televise five games apiece. They'll share the season with CBS and NFL Network televising the first half of the schedule, while NBC and NFL Network televise the second half. Furthermore, both companies will have the rights to stream those games on their own platforms. So whatever company wants the Thursday evening games will have to shell out a lot of money.
According to MacRumors, Yahoo is the frontrunner to secure the digital rights. The report says Yahoo reportedly paid an estimated $15 million to exclusively live stream a 2015 regular season game between the Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars at London's Wembley Stadium.
We'll keep you updated on more news that arrives out of the "Thursday Night Football" bidding war.
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