Netflix will broadcast National Football League games on Christmas Day for the next three years, in its first true foray into live sports.
The streaming platform will show two games on Christmas Day this year, followed by at least one matchup in both 2025 and 2026, the league announced Wednesday. Games will continue to be available on telecasts in local team markets and on the NFL+ mobile app.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but people familiar with the matter said Netflix will pay $75 million per game. Representatives for the NFL and Netflix declined to comment.
The streamer will hire its own announcers for the games and work with existing production companies. Sarandos told CNBC that he felt the NFL was a good fit because it fit the streamer’s events strategy, allowing Netflix to effectively own the day.
Netflix has attracted large audiences with sports programming, from the documentary “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” to the series “Quarterback,” which follows NFL signal callers. While the company made big strides in live programming with a deal to air WWE’s “Raw” and a boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul, the company suggested it hadn’t figured out a strategy for live sports rights that would it worked for her.
“We haven’t seen a profitable way to rent major sports,” Sarandos said in December 2022.
“We’re not anti-sports, we’re just for profit,” Sarandos said.
Now Netflix will stream games for the most popular US sports league, at a time when it is trying to boost profits by raising subscription prices, pushing users towards an ad-level subscription and cracking down on password sharing.
Games could give Netflix a major draw for advertisers. The three NFL games on Christmas Day averaged 28.68 million viewers last year, according to Sports Media Watch.
The Christmas Day matches can act as a marketing ramp for Netflix before “Raw” begins airing in January.
The streaming giant’s forays into live events haven’t been without problems. His live reunion event for the hit reality TV show “Love Is Blind” in April 2023 had a technical glitch that delayed the stream for more than an hour, so the show was no longer live.
The announcement comes as streamers across the industry show increasing interest in live sports programming, particularly the NFL.
In January, NBCUniversal’s Peacock featured an NFL Wild Card game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins, marking the first time a playoff game was broadcast exclusively on a streaming service. AmazonPrime Video has already grabbed exclusive rights to an NFL playoff game next season.
Amazon also signed a Media rights deal with the NFL in 2021, where it agreed to pay about $1 billion annually to have exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football for 10 years, starting with the 2023 season. The deal marked the first time a streaming service exclusively carried a full bundle of games.
Netflix could also want to expand into basketball. CNBC reported last year that Netflix, along with Amazon, appleYouTube TV and Comcast’s NBCUniversal/Peacock have all had preliminary talks with the NBA about possible media rights interest when the league’s deal with Walt Disney and Discovery by Warner Bros ends after next season.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.
— CNBC’s Alex Sherman and Lillian Rizzo contributed to this report
