Netflix is no longer just in the “sports-adjacent” business. On Wednesday, the streaming giant announced a three-season deal with the National Football League that includes two Christmas Day games this year on the service. This is the first time Netflix has partnered with a major sports league, but it won't be the last.
The move follows Netflix's growing push into the live events business. Over the past two weeks, “The Roast of Tom Brady” has been the most-watched English-language TV show. John Mulaney's quirky six-day talk show went viral as part of the live comedy festival Netflix Is a Joke in Los Angeles. The stand-up special “Kat Williams: Walk Folk” was viewed 4.3 million times.
“Last year, we decided to make a big bet on Live, capitalizing on the vast fandom of comedy, reality TV, sports, and more,” Bella Bejaria, Netflix's chief content officer, said in a statement. I did,” he said. “There is no live annual event, sports or otherwise, that can match the crowd that NFL football draws.”
Although the streaming business is mature in the US and Netflix is the dominant service, it still needs to continue to grow. With subscriptions relatively maxed out in the U.S., growth in other revenue streams is critical to the company's success. Among them, advertising is the main one.
As more people abandon traditional cable subscriptions, live sports, the one place where real-time viewership is guaranteed, remains a hot topic for advertisers. That's especially true for the NFL, which remains a ratings juggernaut.
Netflix announced last month that its nearly one-year-old low-cost ad-supported subscription service grew 65% in the first quarter of this year. Netflix has approximately 270 million subscribers worldwide.
“This shows how serious Netflix is about advertising, because how big do they think this is going to be?” said Richard Greenfield, media technology analyst at Lightshed Partners. Because you're not going to do this unless you're fully committed.” . “This is them stepping into the ground and saying, 'We're here, we're going to grow much, much bigger in advertising, and this is effectively day one.'”
Netflix is also working on so-called sports-adjacent live programming. In January, the company signed a multibillion-dollar, 10-year deal for exclusive streaming rights to World Wrestling Entertainment's flagship weekly wrestling show, “Raw.” And in March, it announced it would livestream a boxing match between Mike Tyson and social media influencer Jake Paul in July.
The deal with the NFL is a first for Netflix, but a continuation of the league's streaming strategy.
Amazon began streaming Thursday night games exclusively on its Prime service in 2022. In January, NBCUniversal aired NFL playoff games on Peacock, marking the first time in league history that a streaming service had exclusive rights to a playoff game. The company paid $100 million in rights fees and drew 23 million viewers, calling it “the most streamed live event in U.S. history.” (NFL playoff games traditionally draw about 30 million viewers.)
For the past two years, the NFL has aired three games on Christmas Day and challenged the NBA's stronghold during the winter break. As part of the new deal, Netflix will stream at least one game during the 2025 and 2026 holiday seasons.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is leaning toward streaming as the popularity of broadcast television continues to decline.
“Our fans are using these platforms,” Goodell told reporters during Super Bowl week. “Our fans want to access them. The technology is extraordinary. On some of these platforms, you can do things that linear platforms can't do. For us, it's the future of It's part of it.”
Netflix's games will be simulcast on free TV in each of the competing teams' cities, but Netflix and others are likely to invest even more heavily in the NFL and other sports in the coming years. For example, streaming is already playing a role in current negotiations over the rights to broadcast future National Basketball Association games.
“This feels like a watershed moment for linear television,” analyst Greenfield said. “Having the king of premium streamers say we're seriously in the sports business is a pretty big deal for television, because it doesn't really matter what that means now; It just shows that there is another serious bidder for the rights to the sport.”
emmanuel morgan I contributed a report from New York.
