The Netflix logo is shown on one of the streaming giant’s Hollywood buildings in Los Angeles on July 12, 2023.
Mike Blake | Reuters
Netflix will stream Christmas Day NFL games for the next three years, in its first true step into live sports.
The streaming platform will show two games on Christmas Day this year, followed by at least one matchup in both 2025 and 2026, the league announced Wednesday. The games will continue to be available on broadcast TV in local team markets and on the NFL+ mobile app.
It is unclear how much Netflix paid for the rights to stream the games.
Netflix has drawn large audiences with sports programming, from the “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” documentary to its “Quarterback” series following NFL signal callers. While the company took major strides into live programming with a deal to stream the WWE’s “Raw” and a boxing fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul, the company had suggested it had not found a live sports rights strategy that worked for it.
“We’ve not seen a profit path to renting big sports,” Co-Chief Executive Officer Ted Sarandos said in December 2022.
“We’re not anti-sports, we’re just pro-profit,” Sarandos said.
Now, Netflix will stream games for the most watched U.S. sports league, at a time when it is trying to boost profits by raising subscription prices, pushing users toward an ad-tier membership and cracking down on password sharing. The games could give Netflix a major draw for advertisers: the three Christmas Day NFL games averaged 28.68 million viewers last year, according to Sports Media Watch.
The streaming giant’s forays into live events have not come without issues. Its live reunion event for the hit reality TV show “Love Is Blind” in April 2023 had a technical bug that delayed the stream for more than an hour, at which point the show was no longer live.
The announcement comes as streamers across the industry show increasing interest in live sports programming, particularly the NFL.
In January, NBCUniversal’s Peacock showed an NFL Wild Card game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins, marking the first time a playoff game was broadcast exclusively on a streaming service. Amazon‘s Prime Video has already snatched the exclusive rights to an NFL playoff game next season.
Amazon also signed a media rights deal with the NFL in 2021, where it agreed to pay about $1 billion per year to have exclusive Thursday Night Football rights for 10 years, starting with the 2023 season. The deal was the first time a streaming service carried a full package of games exclusively.
Netflix could be looking to branch out into basketball, as well. CNBC reported last year that Netflix, along with Amazon, Apple, YouTube TV and Comcast’s NBCUniversal/Peacock, have all had preliminary conversations with the NBA about possible interest in media rights when the league’s deal with Walt Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery comes to an end after next season.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.