Both the NFL and the NBA and Turner Sports are offering fans complimentary access to their respective direct-to-consumer subscription streaming offerings, NFL Game Pass and NBA League Pass — giving fans on-demand access to hundreds of past games and other archival league content, per The Wall Street Journal.

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NFL Game Pass will be free in the US until May 31 and internationally until July 31, while NBA League Pass will be free until April 22. The decision comes as major sports leagues deal with or prepare for the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic: Although the NFL is currently in the off-season, the NBA has suspended its current season indefinitely — but for at least 30 days — as of last Wednesday.

Here's what the services typically offer:

NFL Game Pass. Normally $100 per year, NFL Game Pass offers fans on-demand, ad-free streaming access to any NFL game dating back to 2009, although in the US most current-season games are only available as replays after the live game telecast ends. International subscribers have live access to every game via Game Pass. The service also offers additional football programming, including series like "Hard Knocks," produced by HBO and NFL Films.

NBA League Pass. Offered by the NBA and Turner Sports, NBA League Pass offers fans on-demand access to live out-of-market NBA games and replays of archived games, either as a full or condensed version. That archive will include every current-season game up to the suspension as well as access to classic games featuring LeBron James or the late Kobe Bryant. League Pass offers multiple subscription tiers, including an ad-supported version with games from all teams at $200 a year (or $29 a month) or $250 ad-free (or $40 a month).

The leagues are likely using this unprecedented dearth of live sports as an opportunity to both gauge demand for their direct-to-consumer services and convert more fans into paid subscribers. By making these services free for a limited window, the leagues can expose and familiarize fans who might not otherwise have subscribed, since these offerings typically cater to a base of superfans interested in having access to a large, on-demand supply of game content.

Under normal circumstances, that interest is likely to be somewhat more limited because sports games have a relatively short shelf life. And while these services do offer fans some live game access, a meaningful part of their value prop is access to game archives. To that end, since making NFL Game Pass free, interest has already surged: In the three hours after making NFL Game Pass available for free, the NFL said it saw 500 times the average number of daily sign-ups for the service, per a league spokesperson to the Journal.

These experiments probably aren't explicitly designed to loosen ties with the leagues' traditional broadcast partners — but they nevertheless will strengthen the leagues' direct relationships with consumers. For example, it's feasible that most casual fans, and potentially even some non-fans, will sign up for access sometime within the free-access window to either or both services.

At a bare minimum, that would supply the leagues with an enormous newfound wealth of fan engagement data and contact information. Further, these streaming services could become fans' main portals to accessing sports content in upcoming weeks, even as TV networks are reportedly also attempting to fill empty programming schedules with archived games. While it won't spark an overnight shift, it could precipitate a longer-term movement toward on-demand live sports streaming, including from leagues.

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