NFL Touts Success of Peacock-Exclusive Wild Card Game, but Will Still Build Streaming Presence Deliberately

The fans grumbled and complained about an NFL Wild Card game that was exclusively available on Peacock; why was the NFL forcing them to subscribe to a new streaming service to watch a playoff game that had always been free before? Despite those objections, fans followed the game to Peacock, resulting in record viewership for the service and ratings that bested the 2023 Wild Card game that aired on broadcast TV in the same timeslot. Hans Schroeder, the EVP and COO of NFL Media, said that the league is incredibly pleased with the viewership results of the game, which is bad news for fans who are not looking forward to more streaming-exclusive games in the future.

• Peacock’s streaming-exclusive NFL Wild Card pulled in more viewers than NBC’s Wild Card game in the same timeslot in the 2022-23 season.
• Comcast reportedly paid $110 million to stream the game only on Peacock.
• ESPN+, Paramount+, Prime Video, and Peacock could all see streaming exclusive games added going forward.

Was NFL Satisfied with Peacock-Exclusive Wild Card Game?

This week, Schroeder sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to share the league’s views on the Wild Card game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins which took place Saturday, Jan. 13. NBC says 23 million people watched the game, which was more viewers than the Wild Card game which appeared in the same window on NBC in the 2022-23 season.

“We were thrilled,” Schroeder said. “It’s pretty remarkable that the first time we put a wild card game on Peacock it beats the same time slot, same broadcast partner the year before. That’s awesome, and I mean it’s a testament to how fans are changing and watching. It’s a testament to what Comcast did to really build awareness there.”

NBC used its preceding Wild Card game that Saturday afternoon to repeatedly inform viewers that the next contest would only be available on Peacock outside the Kansas City and Miami TV markets. The success of the game on Peacock has been noted by the league, as Schroeder says there are “more opportunities” to increase the amount of NFL games available via streaming in the future.

Which Platforms Could Get Streaming-Exclusive NFL Games Next Year?

There are plenty of opportunities for the NFL to add more streaming-exclusive games as soon as the 2024-25 regular season. The question of how many there are may depend on how deep the pockets of its potential streaming partners are; according to THR, Comcast had to pay the NFL $110 million just for the rights to the Chiefs and Dolphins Wild Card game.

That could mean that Paramount+, despite being an important partner for the league that will carry Super Bowl LVIII next month, may not get an exclusive NFL game of its own. There are already questions about how Paramount Global will afford the $2 billion it owes for its “NFL on CBS” Sunday afternoon package, and the company isn’t likely to pony up an extra one hundred million dollars for the right to move one of its games — especially a playoff game — to its flagship streaming service.

On the other hand, ESPN+ and Prime Video are prime candidates to get more exclusive NFL games starting next season. Prime Video is already the exclusive home of national broadcasts of “Thursday Night Football,” and hosted the NFL’s first-ever Black Friday game in 2023. ESPN+ was one of only two outlets for watching a 2023 regular-season game between the Atlanta Falcons and Jacksonville Jaguars in London, the other being Disney+, which carried a “Toy Story“-themed animated stream of the game. Schroeder pointed specifically to that game as a way to expand the league’s streaming footprint without necessarily using exclusivity as a main draw.

“I don’t think it’s just you know, exclusive games, these platforms also provide opportunities to do things like our Toy Story game, which we were really excited about and creating a different animated version of the game for particularly younger fans to come in,” he said. “And that was distributed to over 95 countries around the world through Disney+, and was the first time getting NFL content onto Disney+, so those are all things we’re gonna be very focused on and continue to look at.

What fans shouldn’t expect is a huge leap that would see the NFL offer all of its games on a single streaming platform like NFL+. The league is still committed to its broadcast partners, and between rights fees and ad revenues it makes far too much money from putting its games on linear broadcast channels to do something like switching to a primarily streaming format. Rather, the NFL will continue to do as it has done — that is, build its presence on streaming platforms slowly and deliberately.

“The vast, vast majority — I think almost 90 percent of our games this year — were available nationally on broadcast television” Schroeder told THR. “So you know I don’t think you’ll see us do something revolutionary, I think this will just be the natural continued evolution of making sure our games given the the screens and the places and the platforms.”