NFL gets record traffic on free streaming service AFN

YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan. Football is good for the American military network.

The military broadcasting service plans to surpass 1 million hours of viewing on its relatively new streaming service this year thanks to American soldiers’ love for the NFL, AFN executives say.

The AFN Now app, launched in 2022 as the network’s first foray into video streaming, has attracted nearly 100,000 registered users, Kim Antos, AFN’s Florida broadcast operations officer, told Stars and Stripes by phone Thursday.

“Last year was really great,” she said. “We’ve more than doubled our user base and we’re going to double our streaming hours this year compared to our first year.”

AFN Now is available free of charge to all Department of Defense employees and their dependents serving overseas. Households can stream the app on four platforms, including smartphones, computers and TV devices such as Roku, Fire TV Stick and Apple TV.

The service has hundreds of streams, including shows, movies and sporting events, available at any time, but the magnet pulling in viewers is clearly focused on football, Antos said.

“For our AFN viewers, it’s NFL, NFL, NFL,” she said. “As much NFL content as we can get out there…they love it.”

The ability to broadcast every NFL game throughout the entire season in one place is unique to AFN, Antos said.

The most popular events broadcast on AFN Now were the Super Bowl and the recent matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills. Both have logged about 80,000 hours of streaming time, she said.

“The NFL is so generous with what they can offer us,” she said. “They love being part of the mission.”

Torus Washington, an Air Force veteran shopping at the Yokota Exchange on Thursday, said he gave up his AFN satellite dish during a recent move between off-base homes and now only watches streaming content on his TV.

The Florida native and Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan started watching AFN Now after setting up his TV to access it, but lately he’s mostly been following sports on the ESPN app, he said.

Washington said he and his wife plan to watch basketball on AFN Now. According to him, she really wants to see the new Japanese player of the Memphis Grizzlies, Yuki Kawamura, in action.

According to Antos, AFN Now has evolved since its launch and now only streams the network’s news channels and is only available to users on military bases.

According to her, the service now works almost anywhere in the world and includes broadcasts of both AFN and AFN Prime sports channels, showing sports on weekends.

It also offers live and on-demand content. For example, live NFL games can be watched on demand throughout the week. Movies and TV shows can be watched for 30 days.

“Being able to offer audiences more live events is excellent,” Antos said. “We have seen most of our clients gravitate towards live content.”

Instead of advertising, informational videos about teams appear during AFN sports broadcasts; Other AFN programs have fewer interruptions, such as about three per film, than commercial broadcasts, Antos said.

AFN tries to model its services after what the U.S. broadcast industry does, she said.

“We believe AFN Now is the future of AFN television, but we understand that AFN needs to be a global solution,” AFN chief content officer James Alexander said in the same call.