Notre Dame football: Irish 2021 home opener to stream on Peacock
The Notre Dame football team kicks off their 2021 home schedule against Toledo in a game that will be streamed only on Peacock.
You can expect at least one more Notre Dame football game to be off NBC this Fall, as it was announced that their Week 2 game against Toledo would be on Peacock instead. Peacock, of course, is NBC’s online streaming service.
To watch this game you’re also going to need to be a premium subscriber, meaning you’ll have to pay extra to watch this game.
Now, streaming is already here for a lot of events, especially in college football, it’s just that it’s normally reserved for the smaller conferences. For instance, the Sun Belt is typically an ESPN+ property, while Conference USA is a complete mess to try and find.
So, while streaming is certainly on the rise, it’s not here yet for major programs like Notre Dame football. It’s also done almost exclusively for teams that don’t have large fanbases or a lot of people who are going to be interested in the game. That begs the question, does NBC think they have a better show for ratings to put on at 2:30 on a Saturday in the Fall?
After all, it’s not like NBC carries any other college football games.
Besides having to pay for the game beyond their regular cable package, the other issue for fans is that Peacock isn’t a particularly good platform. There is no pausing or rewinding, and the layout is also frustrating and it can be difficult to find live events.
In other words, this isn’t exactly a customer-friendly product, or decision, by NBC.
This is, of course, a test to see how well Notre Dame will fit into this platform. For a live sporting event, they can get you to buy a subscription and sell ads to you at the same time, meaning they can make more money. It does, hypothetically, let you watch the game from wherever you happen to be too. It does stop you from going back and forth between games at home, though. So, there is give and take to streaming as a platform.
In truth, this is an experiment for NBC. That’s why it’s just the Toledo game right now, as this is the least valuable game that they’re offering this season. If it’s successful, you can expect more games to switch over, because there is simply more money to be made in streaming, though it will certainly be done in the name of innovation. Of course, that awkward overhead angle that only showed a fraction of the play from last season was an innovation too.