As a lifelong cinephile with a penchant for sports and streaming services, I must say that Netflix‘s foray into NFL media partnerships is proving to be quite the thrilling play-by-play. The streamer’s debut performance on Christmas Day was nothing short of a Hail Mary pass, given the high expectations following their rocky Jake Paul-Mike Tyson event. But, much like a seasoned quarterback, they seem to have managed to avoid any major fumbles thus far.
Netflix‘s rookie start as an NFL media partner — so far — hasn’t drawn any flags.
On Christmas Day, the streamer kicked off their first game, a match between the Kansas City Chiefs and Pittsburgh Steelers, at 1 p.m. Eastern Time, after two hours of pre-game analysis. Following this, the Baltimore Ravens will face off against the Houston Texans at 4:30 p.m. ET, with music sensation Beyoncé set to entertain during halftime by performing a tune from “Cowboy Carter.
So far, Netflix seems to have streamed without significant issues. As of 1:30 PM Eastern Time, there were few error reports regarding Netflix in the United States on Downdetector, a service that monitors uptime. This suggests that only a limited number of users have encountered problems with Netflix on Christmas Day (around 600 as of 1:13 PM ET). These low numbers don’t point to any widespread technical troubles.
Executives at Netflix can breathe a sigh of relief as their first collaboration with the NFL is off to a smooth start, in contrast to their last live sports event – the Jake Paul vs Mike Tyson fight on November 15 – which experienced some technical difficulties.
It could be that the interest in Paul-Tyson was greater than for the Christmas Day football matches. Before Christmas, all four AFC teams involved in Netflix’s doubleheader had already secured playoff spots, so the games were primarily significant for determining postseason rankings. Conversely, ABC and ESPN are airing five NBA games on Christmas Day – a continuous 13-hour sports broadcast – upholding the NBA’s traditional Christmas Day schedule.
Despite some technical issues during the Tyson-Paul livestream, it still managed to attract an approximate global audience of 108 million live viewers simultaneously, making it the “most-watched global sporting event ever” according to the streamer. The peak concurrent streams reached 65 million, with 38 million in the U.S., as stated by Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos at a recent investment conference. Essentially, he said that we were able to pull in an audience similar to that of the Super Bowl.
On November 15th, during parts of the Paul-Tyson event broadcast on Netflix, numerous customers expressed their frustrations on social media due to their video streams freezing as they were buffering. One dissatisfied customer even decided to sue Netflix, claiming that the technical issues made the event nearly unwatchable.
In the US under its deal with the NFL, Netflix removes the live-streamed games three hours after they end (such as the Ravens-Texans game featuring Beyoncé’s performance won’t be rewatchable on Netflix around 11 p.m. ET, and the Chiefs-Steelers will no longer be available by approximately 7 p.m. ET). On the other hand, outside the US, these games disappear from Netflix 24 hours following the live stream conclusion (with NFL Network planning to rebroadcast both games on cable TV).
Despite being on a no-ads plan, Netflix’s NFL live streams contained advertisements. Predictably, these slots were utilized to advertise the company’s own upcoming productions, such as “Squid Game” Season 2 (debuting globally on December 26), “WWE Monday Night Raw,” “Black Doves,” and trailers for “The Night Agent” S2 and Adam Sandler’s “Happy Gilmore 2.
In 2025 and 2026, Netflix will have the right to broadcast at least one NFL holiday game. From January 2025, Netflix will air WWE’s “Monday Night Raw” live every week as part of a $5 billion, 10-year agreement. Recently, Netflix secured exclusive U.S. rights for the 2027 and 2031 editions of the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
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2024-12-25 21:46