Netflix Reportedly in Pursuit of Christmas Day NFL Contest in Latest Bid to Secure Live Sports
The league has a Christmas Day doubleheader up for grabs this year, and opened bidding at the end of March.
Netflix is reportedly finally ready to take the plunge. The world’s largest streaming service has always seemed like a logical partner for the most popular sports league in the United States, but its stance against paying excessive sums of money to win live sports rights made it seem unlikely that it would ever actively pursue broadcasts of NFL games. However, a new report from Puck News indicates that Netflix has entered the chat regarding the NFL’s Christmas Day doubleheader for this coming season, and that it could potentially secure the rights to Christmas games for multiple years to come.
Key Details:
- The NFL is reportedly looking to carve out its Christmas Day games as a package to sell independent of its current broadcast deals.
- The league started bidding for the rights to the Christmas Day doubleheader at $50 million.
- Discussion over a deal reportedly delayed the release of the 2024 NFL schedule this month.
Puck’s reporting indicates that the NFL — which began broadcasting at least one game on Christmas in 2020, despite the NBA’s former dominance of airwaves on the holiday — is now looking to carve out Christmas games as a new broadcast package independent of current deals with CBS, ABC and ESPN, Fox, NBC, and Prime Video. Its negotiations with potential providers reportedly delayed the release of this year’s NFL schedule until May 15.
Netflix is in the running to get that new parcel of games, which would make for an excellent present under the tree for the streamer. After offering three games on Christmas last year, the NFL has decided to make the affair a doubleheader this year. The bidding floor was reportedly set at $50 million, but as the world’s most profitable streaming service, Netflix likely doesn’t have to worry about how it will afford to pay for the games.
When the league first opened bidding for this year’s Christmas Day package, it was reported that it was hoping to sell them to a linear partner rather than a streamer in order to reach a maximum audience. In addition to Prime Video’s weekly “Thursday Night Football” broadcasts, the league already has two streaming-exclusive games on the calendar this season; an opening-week tilt in São Paulo, Brazil featuring the Green Bay Packers and Philadelphia Eagles on Peacock, and a Wild Card game on Prime Video in January.
But reach is one thing the NFL won’t have to worry about if it sells the Christmas package to Netflix. The streamer has 269.6 million global customers, by far the largest of any streamer which reports their numbers publicly. As the world’s most recognized streaming brand, there won’t be much chance NFL diehards don’t know how to get the games on Netflix.
How Has Netflix’s Stance on Live Sports Evolved?
In one sense, it’s fair to say that Netflix telegraphed this move somewhat. It has already produced a lineup of NFL-themed content, with the 2023 series “Quarterback” taking viewers behind-the-scenes of the lives of some of the league’s best-known signal callers, as well as the upcoming “Receiver” series which will focus on famous NFL wideouts.
But there’s no denying Netflix has taken a deliberate pace in adding more sports inventory, and its executives have shot down the idea of adding live sports for years. Even as the streamer has invested heavily in technology that would allow it to livestream more events and reportedly bid on live Formula 1 rights in 2022, co-CEO Ted Sarandos said in October that Netflix was more interested in the “drama” of sports than in the sports themselves and that there had been no “core change” in its philosophy.
Despite that proclamation, the streamer shocked the world in January, striking a deal to stream weekly live episodes of “WWE Raw” for a decade starting in 2025. Netflix was careful to point out the distinction that WWE is “sports entertainment” instead of an outright sporting event, but to observers, it felt that a sea change had occurred and that Netflix might finally be ready to join streamers like Peacock and Paramount+ in offering high-demand live sports programming. That view was further reinforced by Netflix’s decision to stream a live boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson.
Now it appears that the streamer is ready to go after the highest-demand product of them all. The NFL’s schedule release is set for May 15, so it’s likely we’ll find out for certain who will secure this year’s Christmas Day games shortly. Netflix is an excellent candidate to host the games, if it doesn’t get outbid by a broadcaster desperate to pull more views to their linear channels.
Netflix
Netflix is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 3,000+ movies, 2,000+ TV Shows, and Netflix Originals like Stranger Things, Squid Game, The Crown, Tiger King, and Bridgerton. They are constantly adding new shows and movies. Some of their Academy Award-winning exclusives include Roma, Marriage Story, Mank, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.