Netflix will stream NFL games on Christmas Day

Netflix will broadcast Christmas Day National Football League games for the next three years, in its first real step into live sports.

The streaming platform will broadcast two games on Christmas Day this year, followed by at least one game in 2025 and 2026, the league announced Wednesday. Games will continue to be available on television in local team markets and on the NFL+ mobile app.

It’s unclear how much Netflix paid for the rights to stream the games.

Netflix has attracted large audiences with its sports programming, from the documentary “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” to its series “Quarterback” that follows NFL signal-callers. While the company has made big strides in live programming with a deal to air WWE’s “Raw” and a boxing bout between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul, the company has suggested it hasn’t found of live sports rights strategy that worked for her.

“We haven’t seen profitability in big sports rentals,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said in December 2022.

“We’re not anti-sports, we’re just pro-profit,” Sarandos said.

Now Netflix will stream games from America’s most-watched sports league, at a time when it is trying to boost profits by raising subscription prices, pushing users into ad-level subscriptions and cracking down on word sharing exceeds.

Games could offer Netflix a major draw for advertisers. The three NFL Christmas games averaged 28.68 million viewers last year, according to Sports Media Watch.

The streaming giant’s forays into live events haven’t come without problems. His live reunion event for the hit reality TV show “Love Is Blind” in April 2023 featured a technical bug that delayed the broadcast for more than an hour, after which the show was no longer live. direct.

The announcement comes as industry streamers show growing interest in live sports programming, particularly the NFL.

In January, NBCUniversal’s Peacock aired 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 secured exclusive rights to an NFL playoff game next season.

Amazon also signed a media rights deal with the NFL in 2021, in which it agreed to pay approximately $1 billion annually for exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football for 10 years, beginning with the 2023 season. This deal was the first time a streaming service exclusively offered a full set of games.

Netflix could also be looking to get into basketball. CNBC reported last year that Netflix, along with Amazon, AppleYouTube TV and Comcast’s NBCUniversal/Peacock, have all had preliminary conversations with the National Basketball Association about possible interest in media rights when the league’s deal with Walt Disney And Discovery Warner Bros. ends after next season.

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.