The National Football League is thinking outside the box when it comes to its first ever YouTube broadcast of a live NFL game.
Not only are Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs set to take on Justin Herbert and the Los Angeles Chargers from Sao Paulo, Brazil in Week 1, but the game’s broadcast will also include a very popular content creator.
Donald De La Haye, otherwise known as Deestroying, is lending his talents to the NFL‘s inaugural YouTube broadcast.
Deestroying will bring with him his extremely popular YouTube channel that consists of 6.32 million subscribers, as he is set to be one of the sideline reporters for the game, along with Stacey Dales.
The pairing makes sense as the YouTube sensation has a football background himself. He kicked at Central Florida for two seasons in 2015 and 2016 before running into trouble with the NCAA and his relatively new YouTube channel at the time, in which he began to monetize from it.
Before today’s era of name, image and likeness, that was still illegal.
Deestroying stayed true to form and ultimately chose to continue with his channel, thus leaving the football team. He ended up having a brief stint in the CFL with the Toronto Argonauts, and made some noise as a member of the San Antonio Brahmas of the UFL.
He will be using his football background to provide insightful, albeit entertaining, commentary to the game’s broadcast come September 5.
Along with Dales, the broadcast will feature Rich Eisen handling the play-by-play duties, while Kurt Warner provides the color and analysis.
Longtime NFL referee Terry McAulay will be on the call as the rules analyst.
The studio team consists of a star-studded cast of who’s who, including host Kay Adams, former MVP Cam Newton, and Pro Bowlers Derek Carr, Brandon Marshall and Tyrann Mathieu.
They will also be joined by another YouTube creator, Peter Overzet.
There is a world where Mahomes plays excellent and is then interviewed by Deestroying after the game.
Or how about Deestroying going up to Jim Harbaugh at halftime and asking him how the game is going? The possibilities are endless.
The NFL and YouTube are hoping this is the first of many successful broadcasts with one another, but the first go-around may have a bit of trial and error as they both find their footing.
Above all, the hope is that the broadcast itself isn’t delayed or buffers at any point or god forbid, loses signal.
Last year on Christmas Day, Netflix broadcast its first ever NFL games, and saw a resounding success with massive numbers, and few technological hiccups.
Netflix pulled in over 30 million viewers across the globe for Chiefs-Steelers and over 31 million for Ravens-Texans, making it an unequivocal success.
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Granted, they had the advantage of it being an international holiday, with families at home, gathered around the television. The NFL and YouTube would be over the moon if they reached those numbers.
The game takes place on a Friday evening, which is traditionally a big no-no for the NFL, as they have wanted to reserve Friday night for high school football. Last year they threw that policy out the window, as they put the Packers-Eagles on a Friday night, also in Brazil.
The game was a success, but it also wasn’t broadcast on YouTube. We will know shortly just how the media giant is able to handle an NFL game.
The good news is, the game’s stream is free of charge. That, and Deestroying, should help bump the numbers.