With the NFL season kicking off on Thursday night, the biggest league in the U.S. is looking to grow with two key audiences: streamers and international fans. 

Not content to coast after a 2021 in which 75 of the top 100 U.S. broadcasts were NFL games, the league is looking outside the country.

• This season will see a trio of games in London in October, followed by games in Munich and Mexico City in November.
• Two games at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium last year brought in more than 120,000 fans combined.
• Over 770,000 accessed the ticketing site for the game at Bayern Munich’s Allianz Arena when tickets went on sale in July. The stadium holds 70,000 for international games.

In April, the NFL assigned general managers in the U.K. and Australia to grow the game in those countries.

Stream Effort

While Thursday’s season opener between the defending champion Los Angeles Rams and ascendant Buffalo Bills will be broadcast on NBC, most Thursday contests will only be available on Amazon Prime Video, which is paying $1 billion annually for “Thursday Night Football.”

The league incorporated the streaming services of NBC, Disney, CBS, and Fox in its set of 11-year media deals that begin next season and are collectively worth more than $110 billion.

The league is also launching its own streaming service, NFL+.

With the biggest names in broadcast media on board, the league is looking to the tech giants for NFL Sunday Ticket: Google, Apple, and Amazon are all reportedly eyeing the out-of-market package, which the league hopes to sell to a streaming service for $2.5 billion annually.

The increasing popularity of women’s sports is undeniable.

In the U.K., 36.1 million people watched women’s sports between January and July of this year — more than double the 17.5 million people that watched during the same period in 2021, according to the Women’s Sport Trust.

Not only were more people watching, but each individual’s average viewing time across all programming increased 188% year-over-year.

• Audiences watched women’s sports for an average of 403 minutes between January and July, compared with 140 during the same period last year.
• 57% of viewers watched women’s sports three or more times, an increase from 26% last year.

There’s no question that the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 helped — the tournament’s final was the most-watched soccer game ever in the U.K. with a peak BBC audience of 17.4 million. Of the women’s Euro viewers, 54% had watched women’s sports earlier in the year.

Based on viewing hours, soccer brought in 72% of women’s sports audiences.

There was more coverage of women’s sports, too. Women’s sports made up 16% of coverage hours BBC One, BBC Two, Channel 4, ITV, and Sky Sports Main Event, compared to 9% in 2021.

Viewership Comparisons

Despite the significant year-over-year climb, the viewership figures are still smaller than 2019, when the last women’s World Cup took place. 

Between January and July of 2019, 40.4 million people watched at least three minutes of women’s sports, with the average viewing time 525 minutes.

A big name in Formula 1 is raising money to get its balance sheet back on track.

Aston Martin is raising $663.6 million in a rights issue.

• The company is leaning on existing investors, including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund — the main backer of LIV Golf. Previous reports said that the PIF would invest around $93 million.
• The rights issue makes the PIF one of the company’s largest shareholders.
• Mercedes-Benz and Aston Martin chairman Lawrence Stroll’s Yew Tree also invested. Stroll’s son Lance Stroll drives for the Aston Martin F1 team. 

In July, Aston Martin rejected a $1.5 billion investment offer from Investindustrial and Geely that would have seen those two companies take control of the luxury carmaker.

Engine Running

Aston Martin broke ground last year on a $200 million facility in Silverstone, England, that will house the entire manufacturing process for its racing team. 

Team boss Mike Krack has raised the possibility that the brand could become an F1 engine supplier in 2026, when new regulations that promote clean fuel and sustainability kick in. 

Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault, and Honda currently supply engines, and Audi has committed to doing so starting in 2026. Red Bull plans to follow by employing its Red Bull Powertrains unit.

Who will be driving for the team remains an open question after the retirement of F1 mainstay Sebastian Vettel.

French video game developer Ubisoft saw its shares tumble by more than 17% on Wednesday after Chinese tech giant Tencent increased its stake in the company. 

The Assassin’s Creed maker had reportedly been drawing buyout interest from several private equity firms, with Blackstone and KKR & Co. studying the company’s viability as an investment. 

Tencent plans to invest $296.9 million in Guillemot Brothers Limited — the parent company of Ubisoft. The pending investment will provide Tencent with a 49.9% stake in Paris-based Ubisoft. 

• Tencent will use $198 million to buy an indirect stake in Ubisoft.
• The remaining capital will be invested in Guillemot Brothers Ltd.
• The Guillemot family currently holds a 15% stake in Ubisoft.
• Ubisoft has a market capitalization of $4.42 billion. 

The deal allows Tencent to raise its direct stake in Ubisoft from 4.5% to 9.99% — which includes voting rights. However, Tencent will not be allowed to sell its shares in Ubisoft for a five-year period or increase its stake from 9.99% for eight years. 

Underwhelming Results 

Ubisoft reported $293 million in net bookings in fiscal Q1 — surpassing the company’s estimates of $279 million — but a 10% decrease compared to the same period the year prior. 

Tencent generated $19.77 billion in revenue in Q2 2022, a 3% decrease compared to Q2 2021, while revenue for domestic and international games fell 1% year-over-year during the quarter to $4.7 billion and $1.6 billion, respectively.

Q2 2022 marked Tencent’s first-ever year-over-year revenue decline.