There is no more valuable property in television than the National Football League, and there is no bigger video hub on the Internet than YouTube. Now, the two have agreed to join forces to take over the world - or something like that.
The NFL has announced a partnership with Google that will give the league something of a preferred status on the world's most powerful search engine. Users that search, for instance, "Ravens Steelers" into their Google search box will be taken to game highlights on the NFL's official YouTube channel. This allows the league to take the driver's seat in terms of its own copyrighted content being posted on YouTube, and gives fans a reliable source to find highlights on YouTube - rather than waiting for "steelersfan1997" to post highlights.
The new partnership will also allow the NFL to share in ad revenue that Google generates on YouTube videos. Google has also agreed to promote the NFL on YouTube and elsewhere, and provide expanded search results on the all-important Google search bar.
The new partnership makes the NFL the most accessible entity in American entertainment today. The league now has partnerships with Disney (ESPN), NewsCorp (Fox), Viacom (CBS), Comcast (NBC) and Google. It doesn't get any bigger than that.