Verizon Wireless will pay the National Football League a reported $1 billion over four years for the rights to make additional football games available on its customers’ smartphones. In a significant move for the mobile industry, the NFL will begin to show Sunday afternoon games on Verizon Wireless phones next year. Select Sunday, Monday and Thursday night games are already available on Verizon phones, but there are typically 10-12 games scheduled on a Sunday afternoon.

The $1 billion deal is nearly “40 percent more than Verizon agreed to pay when it signed the current four-year, $720 million agreement in 2010, a growth rate similar to what the NFL and other sports leagues have received in their latest TV deals,” reports The Wall Street Journal.

“According to the terms, Verizon Wireless customers who sign up for the service will be able to access NFL games through an app on Sunday, Monday and Thursday nights this season, as well as the league-owned channel, NFL Network, and its NFL RedZone, which shows scoring plays on game days,” explains the article. “Beginning in 2014, they also will be able to watch all home-market games on their mobile phones, as well as all postseason games, including the Super Bowl.”

The agreement, which only covers smartphones and does not include tablets, marks a significant break from the exclusivity the NFL has historically provided to broadcast, cable and satellite television partners.

“It doesn’t seem to have had an impact on Sunday night or Monday night viewership, so we don’t anticipate that it will impact the Sunday afternoon audience,” said Lou D’Ermilio, a spokesman for Fox Sports, on the potential cannibalization of audiences. In fact, Sunday Night Football was the most watched series on television last year.

“Verizon Wireless sees the NFL deal as a way to attract new customers, retain existing ones and make money selling subscriptions and advertisements within the NFL app,” notes WSJ.

“This is about leveraging technology to try to make the fan experience better and to try to make the game better,” said Brian Rolapp, chief operating officer for NFL Media. Major League Baseball began streaming live games in 2009 and currently averages more than 300,000 streams per day on mobile devices, a 43 percent increase from last year.

“I can see viewers for NFL games on mobile continuing to double for the foreseeable future,” said media consultant Lee Berke. “At this point, nobody knows where the upper limit is, and that’s why these deals are being done. In the 1970s people predicted cable would reach an inflection point at 30 percent penetration, but now we’re at 80-90 percent with pay television.”

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