Netflix has officially acquired the NFL’s Christmas Day slate this season and at least one game on the holiday in the subsequent two years.
The NFL and Netflix have entered into a three-year deal in which the streamer will carry at least one Christmas Day game each season, including both of this year’s contests, it was announced Wednesday. Radio host and NFL analyst Boomer Esiason was first to report that the Netflix was a possibility for the Christmas games.
The NFL announced later Wednesday that the games will be Chiefs-Steelers at 1 PM ET and Ravens-Texans and 4:30.
Prior reporting by Esiason and John Ourand of Puck had focused only on this year’s Christmas games, making the additional games in 2025 and 2026 a new development. The Netflix deal does not preclude the other NFL broadcasters from carrying Christmas games in those years, and one can reasonably expect Amazon — a late bidder on this year’s contests — to carry a game next season, when the holiday falls on a Thursday.
The NFL deal marks a milestone for Netflix, which to this point has rarely carried any live programming whatsoever, much less live sports. Once known for sending DVDs through the mail, the company that ushered in the streaming era had largely restricted itself to ad-free, on-demand programming, ceding live, ad-supported fare like live sports to competitors such as Amazon Prime and Apple TV.
It is likely that the NFL deal will result in Netflix submitting to traditional Nielsen measurement for the first time, as Amazon and Peacock before it.
For the NFL, the Netflix deal creates another powerful media partner. The league is now in business with three of the four “FANG” tech companies — Amazon, Netflix and Google — to say nothing of its traditional media partners such as Disney and Comcast. The league that is by far the most committed to traditional broadcast television has also been the most aggressive in the streaming space, and will now have games that are streamed exclusively via four separate platforms in 2024 — ESPN+, Peacock, Amazon and Netflix.
The Netflix deal was announced just hours ahead of the NFL’s schedule release.
Props to Netflix, but the real winners are the NBA, who gets Christmas Day back this year being the only game in town on broadcast. If I was the NBA, I’d have the first 4 games all on ABC to take advantage of this situation. Only the last game in late night should be exclusive to ESPN. Next season, I’ll be curious if NBC gets a share of NBA games on Christmas Day.
The streaming honeymoon is over for the NFL, now they’re spreading their exclusive games around to all of these streamers they’re going to price their customer base out. NFL better stop while they’re ahead before it’s too late. I hope to never see the day that the Super Bowl is exclusive to streaming, that’ll be the day the Super Bowl is killed. What advertiser is going to pay all of that money to have their eyes on a smaller viewing base?
So on next year’s Christmas Day we’ll have (at least) a tripleheader with Netflix, Amazon, FOX all carrying rights for Christmas Day on a Thursday.
This will likely be beneficial to WWE, as RAW begins in January 2025. Customers joining Netflix for the NFL games will be exposed to the new WWE content available on the platform just over a week later.
I guess less is more. I wouldn’t subscribe to a streaming platform if every NFL game was aired exclusively including the Super Bowl. And NFL games on a Wednesday? I don’t think so. I’ll gladly watch the NBA which is the Christmas tradition, not the NFL which is trying to steal the spotlight of every day on the calendar.
Agreed
They’re in business with CBS/Paramount too
How much more money does the NFL have to make. The greed is insane. How about the masses that don’t have Netflix. Seems to me that Congress needs to look at a monopoly.
How many Christmas Day games will be on Netflix this year?
Two
This is why I try not to read too much into reports from insiders and comments from upper heads (CEOs, Presidents, etc.) because of examples like this. Netflix CEO said after they acquired WWE’s Monday Night Raw, “I would not look at this as a signal of any other change, or any change to our sports strategy.”
Since then, they put together a Tyson/Paul boxing match that Im sure was very costly and they also paid Tom Brady $26M to get roasted (I know that’s not live sports, but it was a live event that was headlined by a football legend).
With all said, I have to give Netflix tons of credit. Following their CEO comments I thought it was the right thing for them to not go after sports rights and agreed with the CEO. However, I am a fan of risk-takers as long as there is calculated risks involved. I believe the Brady’s roast was a risk, but it seemed to me Netflix achieved that. I believe they will see success from Tyson/Paul match. It’s very possible they will score a couple of Touchdowns from their two Christmas games.
We’ll see if this helps Netflix for the remaining decade because their old model that helped their rise looked like it was going to be the same model bringing them down. They are adapting, but not quite all-in and that is okay.
Do we have any idea who the announcers could be?