Netflix co-chief executive Greg Peters has hinted at the streaming service’s approach to its upcoming National Football League (NFL) Christmas Day game broadcasts, saying it plans to approach the games differently to other rights holders.
The streaming giant agreed a deal with the league in March to show at least one live game on Christmas Day globally for the next three seasons. The agreement begins with the ongoing campaign, with Netflix to broadcast the Kansas City Chiefs’ game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the Baltimore Ravens’ clash with the Houston Texans during this year’s holiday.
Speaking at the Financial Times (FT) Business of Entertainment Summit last week, Peters (pictured above left) said that Netflix saw the opportunity as a singular event, instead of something that could happen on a regular basis. He also teased that the company planned to take a different approach to its NFL broadcasts compared to the league’s other broadcast partners.
“We look at the two Christmas Day NFL games as more like an event kind of thing, where for one day football will be on Netflix,” Peters said, as reported by Deadline. “Hopefully, those will be amazing games and we’ll all be talking about what’s going on there.
“We plan to ‘Netflix-ify’ them a little bit, so we’ll plan to have a little bit of stuff around the games with our talent and stuff like that that will hopefully make it super-fun.”
The NFL represents the biggest addition to Netflix’s roster of sports rights, alongside its ten-year global deal for WWE programming and the domestic rights to the promotion’s Monday Night Raw, which is worth a reported US$5 billion. It has additionally built out a lengthy portfolio of sports-related documentaries, as well as developing its own live sports exhibition events to promote its sports docuseries.
In discussing its sports rights approach, Peters noted that making sports deals work for the business was “challenging”. He also pointed out that “there’s not really the opportunity for quite some time” to make such a move, with most major rights now off the market.
Still, Peters acknowledged that Netflix is “poking at the edges” of a full-scale live sports element, and that he had learned previously to “never say never” on a possible expansion of the streamer’s current portfolio.
“Having Thursday Night Football or the NBA or things like that, we’d love to do those things. It would be amazing,” he added. “We also want to do it in a way that works for the business and those have been typically challenging deals to go and do and make it work for the business.
“I’ve learned from advertising and all these other things that you should not rule out these things categorically. There may come a time, but no plans at this point.”
By SportsProMedia
