The NFL announced yesterday that it plans to exclusively stream a single game next season, a week 7 matchup from London between the Buffalo Bills and the Jacksonville Jaguars. The October 25th game will still be televised in the 2 home markets, starting at 9:30am ET, but elsewhere it will only be available online (though the NFL hasn't yet signed a digital distribution partner).

Brian Rolapp, the NFL's EVP, Media, characterized the move as mainly an experiment, meant to impart as much learning as possible (he also maintained that TV is still the best distribution option). That sounds right to me, though how much can really be learned from streaming a single game is a bit unclear (e.g. advertiser interest? technical or delivery quality? audience size?).

In this context, I think of the NFL's move as more of a baby step toward digital distribution. Of course, given its multi-billion broadcast and cable TV contracts, the NFL doesn't have a lot of games to experiment with in the first place. But as I pointed out almost 2 years ago, when there was a big buzz around the NFL potentially licensing Sunday Ticket to Google (which was eventually renewed by DirecTV), it still feels very premature for NFL to make a big move to online anyway.

Online video has come a long way in a very short time, but it still isn't ubiquitous in the same way that TV is in a few important ways. These include variable consumer broadband connectivity, heterogeneous viewing devices, unpredictable WiFi networks, imperfect ad insertion, etc. It is still common to see hiccups with a live-streamed event, such as with the Oscars this past February.

When a live event is simultaneously broadcast on TV, like March Madness is, there's less risk if the live-stream gets fouled up. But when it's exclusively live-streaming, it's the equivalent of performing without a net. So for the incredibly brand-conscious NFL, a cautious step like streaming just a single game to start makes sense.

The other reason it makes sense is that the NFL hardly wants to be seen as an abettor of cord-cutting. Live sports are the one and only firewall for pay-TV, which is under huge pressure already and poised to increase substantially with the impending launch of HBO Now.

The NFL's broadcast deals are very long-term and so while the league can't ignore digital distribution, it also can't and doesn't want to do anything significant that would undermine the financial viability of its broadcast partners. Streaming a single, mid-season, non-primetime game between 2 small market teams unlikely to be in contention is just about the safest route the NFL could have gone.