No more wondering whether Netflix is going to show real live sports: The streamer now has a three-season deal with the most popular sports league in America — the NFL.
Netflix will show two NFL games on Christmas Day this year, plus "at least one" game on Christmas in 2025 and 2026, the company and the NFL announced Wednesday.
The deal will cost Netflix about $75 million per game, Bloomberg reported.
As we've discussed before, the logic for Netflix is simple here: While Netflix spent years insisting it didn't want to be in live sports, that was before it had an ad business, and live sports — particularly for the NFL — are considered the best way to aggregate an audience of ad watchers. Not coincidentally, Netflix is making its pitch to advertisers Wednesday in New York as part of the annual "upfront" pitch cycle.
And if you don't care about Netflix's ad sales and care only about watching NFL games, this simply means you need to have yet another network to watch games this fall. The league, which has become an expert at getting multiple media companies to pay it for games, already had deals with CBS, Fox, NBC, Disney/ESPN, and Amazon. Add another to the list.
Update: May 16, 2024 — Netflix will pay the NFL about $150 million to broadcast two NFL games this year, according to a Bloomberg report, not $150 million for each game.
