After years of reluctance to even consider live sports deals, Netflix evolved its thinking on the subject substantially in 2024. The year started with a 10-year agreement to stream “WWE Raw” each week beginning in 2025, and continued with a deal to stream NFL games live on Christmas Day. To end the year, Netflix wrapped up a deal to stream the 2027 and 2031 FIFA Women’s World Cups in the United States, and that string of successes might lead one to think that the service is all in on major sports deals going forward. But company co-CEO Ted Sarandos pumped the breaks on that line of thinking on Tuesday, while discussing Netflix’s sports future during its conference call to analyze its fourth quarter 2024 earnings.

Key Details:

• Sarandos said that Netflix wants to “bring value” to the leagues it partners with.
• He also called the economics of a full-season sports deal “extremely challenging.”
• The co-CEO refused to comment on whether or not Netflix would be interested in UFC events.

Sarandos was thrilled with the results of Netflix’s live NFL streams on Christmas Day, touting an average minute audience of over 30 million for both games. But as he has in the past, Sarandos made it clear that the bottom line was the most important thing when considering sports deals. He said during Tuesday’s conference call to discuss Netflix’s fourth-quarter earnings that sports deals would have to “bring value” to the leagues Netflix partners with.

So, would Netflix think about jumping in on larger sports deals, like a package of MLB or NFL regular season games? Sarandos didn’t shoot down the idea out of hand, but he did reiterate that any such agreements would have to make financial sense for his company.

“We are constantly trying to broaden our programming, and live events is one of those things and sports is part of those live events,” he said. “So when I look at this and say, this is a really fantastic thing, but do we — but it doesn’t really change the underlying economics of full-season big league sports being extremely challenging.”

Sarandos also said he was “thrilled with everything about” the initial returns on “WWE Raw,” which saw a big ratings jump in its first week on the streamer as compared to its linear TV ratings in 2024. When queried about the potential for Netflix to pursue another top combat sports league in the UFC, however, the co-CEO demurred.

“I’m not going to comment anything specifically like the UFC, but WWE is off to a great start,” Sarandos said. “Our first week, we drew about 5 million views, which is about two times the audience that Monday Night Raw was getting in linear television. Pretty consistent with how we modeled it, how we hoped to build the audience for the league.”

UFC rights remain with ESPN through the end of 2025, and the two sides will be in an exclusive negotiating window until April. But there is a possibility that UFC will want to split its rights between multiple partners to maximize its revenue, and streamers like Netflix could be exactly what it’s looking for.

As Sarandos reminded analysts repeatedly, any live sports deals for Netflix going forward will have to depend on the economics making sense. But Sarandos has come a long way from saying that Netflix hadn’t “figured out how” to make live sports pay off for the streamer, to be certain.

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