NFL games drive major streaming sign-ups again in 2025
NFL games drive major streaming sign-ups again in 2025
New data from Antenna shows that NFL games drove large numbers of customers to streaming services that hosted them this season.
Super Bowl LX will wrap the 2025-26 NFL season on Sunday. For many NFL fans, of course, it feels as if the season just started, but it’s almost time to start preparing for the draft! Data research firm Antenna is now looking back on the season that was, and its findings show once again that the NFL was a major driver of streaming sign-ups for the services that hosted pro football games throughout the season.
Key Details:
- Major bump: Through the NFL season, Antenna observed average daily signups for Peacock jumped 87%.
- Merry Christmas: Netflix attracted nearly half a million customers for its Christmas Day games.
- On the rise: NFL+ and NFL Sunday Ticket combined to have over 6 million subscribers by season’s end.
Antenna’s charting shows a consistent trend over the past three NFL seasons: average daily sign-ups for ESPN, Paramount+, and Peacock jump significantly during the season when live games are available on each service. Paramount+ has averaged over 100,000 daily sign-ups during each of the past three football seasons, thanks to its package of Sunday afternoon games.
Antenna measured that it was an especially good year for the Super Bowl-hosting Peacock. That streamer drew 101,000 average daily sign-ups between Sept. 4 and Dec. 31, an 87% increase over the off-season average of 54,000 daily subscriptions.
Click chart to expand.
Netflix recently became an NFL partner, but it, too, is enjoying the fruits of that relationship. Antenna observed 461,000 sign-ups to Netflix between Dec. 24 and Dec. 26, the three-day window for the streamer’s NFL Christmas Gameday. That number represents a 133% increase over the platform’s average daily figure over the course of 2025.
Other NFL streaming platforms saw major success in 2025 — particularly NFL Sunday Ticket, which added nearly 1 million more subscribers in 2025 over its peak in 2024. Subscriptions were up 56% year-over-year for the service, which offered discounts of hundreds of dollars for first-time customers. The data also shows that NFL+ subscriptions in Q4 2025 were up 29% year-over-year.
Click chart to expand.
The subscriber impact of Super Bowl LX on Peacock will no doubt be substantial, a boon for a streamer that has been stuck under 50 million subscribers since its 2020 launch. The NFL is a proven driver of big subscription numbers, and streamers may pursue the league hard during its next round of media rights negotiations.
Peacock
Peacock is a subscription video streaming service from NBCUniversal that includes original shows, blockbuster movies, and classic television series. Peacock is home to “Yellowstone,” “The Office,” and original hits like “Poker Face” and “Bel-Air.” You can also watch live sports and NBC programming, including the NFL, MLB, WWE, the Olympics, the Premier League, NASCAR, the French Open, college football and basketball, and the PGA Tour. Premium Plus subscribers can stream their local NBC feed in all 210 markets.