Pursuing New Income Streams

In recent newsletters we have spoken about how the tech titans are busy diversifying their revenue streams to create future growth. Did you see that Amazon reached an agreement to pay $10 billion over 10 years for the exclusive rights to broadcast Thursday night NFL games? That is a lot of money for an e-tail company to spend on content! Amazon, of course, has a big long term plan.

Off the bat, if people want access to the Thursday night games, they will have to sign up to become Amazon Prime members. Amazon Prime members spend significantly more money at Amazon than non-Prime customers. This is a clever way to get more people spending.

Another possible revenue stream is through gambling. These games will be streamed instead of being broadcast through traditional cable. The implication is that viewers are already connected to the internet, making it easy for them to 'one click' on a betting site. Viewers can watch the game and have the odds running on the bottom of the screen.

If you are not into gambling, imagine having an ad-break coupled with a link directly to Amazon to buy the product. The biggest problem with traditional TV advertising is that advertisers hook a viewer, but by the time the TV show is finished, the viewer has forgotten about their planned purchase. Advertisers will pay big bucks to have the ability for viewers to make an impulse buy on the spot.