The NFL has officially reached a new deal with Netflix that will see the streamer bookend the season.
Netflix announced Wednesday that it has acquired rights to three additional NFL game windows and the NFL Honors as part of a four-year media rights extension through the 2029-30 season. Under the deal, the streamer will annually carry one game in the first and last weeks of the season and a new game on the night before Thanksgiving, in addition to its preexisting Christmas Day inventory.
This season’s slate includes the Week 1 Rams-49ers International Series game from Melbourne on September 10, Packers-Rams on the night before Thanksgiving on November 25, a yet-to-be-announced Christmas Day doubleheader, and a matinee game on the Saturday of Week 18 January 9.
Netflix in its announcement Wednesday said that its deal includes one Christmas Day game per year after this season, but Sports Media Watch has learned that the streamer will have a path to carrying Christmas doubleheaders in the new deal. It is not clear whether that is actually a change from status quo, as the NFL has scheduled Netflix for doubleheaders the past two seasons even though the streamer is only contractually owed one game.
The new Week 1 game on Netflix does not have to be an International Series contest, though that will likely be the case, SMW has learned. This season will be the third-straight in which the NFL has scheduled an International Series contest on the night after the Kickoff Game.
As for the remaining inventory, the new Thanksgiving Eve and Week 18 Saturday games were carved out from the four “Monday Night Football” doubleheader games that ESPN relinquished as part of its acquisition of NFL Network. The other two were awarded to NBC and FOX.
Those four “MNF” games contractually aired on ABC and ESPN+, typically directly opposite competing games on ESPN. It was previously reported that the ABC-exclusive windows will be replaced with corresponding simulcasts of ESPN games, meaning that functionally, the NFL is swapping ESPN-exclusive editions of “MNF” for two on Netflix and two on broadcast television.
The NFL Honors, which had not been mentioned in any reporting until recently, will now air exclusively on Netflix. The event had traditionally aired on the network carrying the Super Bowl, and in recent years was simulcast on NFL Network.
Netflix has established a foothold in sports media via its “event” strategy of acquiring standalone games, rather than full-season packages. In addition to the four or five NFL games Netflix will now carry each season, the streamer is also in the first year of a deal with Major League Baseball to carry an Opening Night game, the Home Run Derby and a special event game (the “Field of Dreams” game this season).
The new Netflix deal comes as the NFL faces a federal investigation into its rights deals with streaming services that has been cheerled — and potentially even instigated — by Fox Corporation. The NFL has defended itself by noting its extensive broadcast television schedule, which far surpasses any other league, and by pushing back against the idea that streamers are less accessible than their linear counterparts.
Netflix, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a recent Vanity Fair profile, “is not a small distribution. In fact, you can make an argument it’s bigger than some of the networks.” League VP/broadcast planning Mike North said in a podcast last month that “you can make a case” moving the four ex-“MNF” game from ESPN to streaming is “more fan-friendly” as streamers are “arguably more widely distributed” than ESPN, which he noted is in 50 million homes.
The NFL was originally set to award all of the ex-ESPN inventory to streaming companies, per multiple reports, but YouTube “balked” at the possibility of splitting what would have been a seven-game package with Netflix, John Ourand of Puck reported last week.
