Tech giant Microsoft and the National Football League (NFL) have come to an agreement to provide the league with Microsoft Surface, their tablet technology. However, announcers in the past weeks have been calling them iPads.

The deal, amounting to US$400 million over the next five years, aims to make watching football more interactive for the fans. The interactive features wanted to make use of the Xbox One and other Microsoft devices.

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Viewers were able to split their screen to access stats, fantasy football information, highlights, Skype with fans during game broadcasts, and send information to different devices.

More importantly, Microsoft wanted to make their tablet, the Surface, the official tablet of the NFL.

However, they ran into a problem these past couple of weeks.

In the first week of the NFL season, at least two television announcers saw the players and coaches using the tablet, but referred to it as an iPad.

During a Monday Night Football game, ESPN's Trent Dilfer was joking about how the 75 year old head coach of the Arizona Cardinals, Tom Moore, took a long time to learn how to scroll through pictures on his iPad.

Fox commentator, John Lynch, made a similar mistake joking that New Orleans Saints quarterback, Drew Brees was not watching movies on his iPad.

Lynch did catch on to his mistake, but corrected himself by saying that the players now had "iPad-like" tools.

Throughout the first two weeks of the NFL's season, the Microsoft Surface has not been referred to as such.

In fact, apart from the logo appearing in the replay monitors used by officials, the terms "Microsoft" and "Surface" have not been mentioned in any broadcast.

The NFL and Microsoft have not offered any comments on the matter.

TagsMicrosoft Surface, NFL