Mike Tyson fighting Jake Paul, the NFL on Christmas Day, and a Super Bowl level BeyoncĂ© performance have all been great boosts to Netflix’s business.
The streaming Juggernaut reported that total subscribers exceeded more than 300 million, with nearly 19 million new subscriber subscribers recorded in the final quarter of 2024. (As of Wednesday morning, Netflix stock is surging.)
The company has been quick to point to the success of its sports programming of late, including NFL Double-Headers including the Paul-Tyson Boxing Match and Netflix’s own BeyoncĂ©-Fronted Halftime Show. It attracts more viewers than a football match.
Market research firm Antenna estimated that Netflix drove in more than 650,000 new subscribers on days surrounding NFL games. According to Antenna, the Paul-Tyson Fight led the way with over 1.4 million subscription sign-ups.
The company laid out its sports programming strategy in a letter to shareholders released Tuesday.
“We are not focused on acquiring the rights to large regular season sports packages. Rather, our live strategy is to offer miss, special event programming,” the company said.
It positions Netflix as a sort of “anti-ESPN.”
ESPN spends its rights budget on amassing large amounts of regular season sports packages, both by design and necessity. The network’s currency is live games, so they are specifically spent on that programming. (This tonnage of live games will make it even more important for ESPN, as it launches its own direct-to-consumer sports platform (“flagship,” as it now goes by its code name)), as ESPN/ABC plans to launch its own direct-to-consumer sports platform, with the upcoming Super Bowls, NBA Finals, College Most marquee events in sports media history, including the Football Championship and Stanley Cup Final.
The luxurious position Netflix has found itself is evident in its acquisition strategy. It doesn’t need any live sports. You need enough “loud and memorable” (in your own words) live sports to keep your audience engaged.
With a market capitalization of $370 billion and a massive global audience, Netflix may be able to pick and choose what’s “impossible to miss” if its stock price skyrockets on Wednesday after Tuesday’s quarterly report. And probably outperform everyone on the market.
That’s a big reason why the Christmas Day football experiment is so important to both Netflix and the NFL.
Netflix clearly understood that they needed to test whether fans would make the jump from traditional NFL broadcast platforms to streaming games on Netflix, and Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime Video proved the concept.
Netflix hired dozens of on-air personalities from other networks and, of course, paid BeyoncĂ© to deliver a halftime show that wouldn’t be out of place at the Super Bowl. The paychecks included the most-watched NFL games on streaming platforms.
Netflix has the rights to play the game again on Christmas Day in 2025.
The NFL should be understandably excited. They get deep-pocketed new entrants who get their product in front of a global audience of billions and start making appearances and broadcasts. It feels similar to what fans are used to.
Netflix is ​​a natural (top) bidder for new NFL game packages, such as a new “18th Game,” international package, or something new. NBA).
Now for the WWE layer. Netflix brought in WWE’s Monday Night Live Show and launched a weekly show earlier this month. WWE’s road show on Monday nights feels more like a “special event” than “multi-game week.”
What qualifies as a sports-related “special event”? It’s also one of the few premium live sports packages currently available?
UFC fight. WWE and UFC share a parent company (TKO Holdings), so Netflix’s $10 billion investment in WWE could demonstrate its commitment regarding future deals involving the UFC. ESPN owns the full rights exclusively until next year. UFC will consider splitting the package between multiple carriers. work out.
Netflix last month won the rights to broadcast the Women’s World Cup in 2027 and 2031. No one should be surprised if Netflix uses this as a step toward acquiring the next available Men’s World Cup. 2030.
As shown by the Paul-Tyson Fight, the live “roast” of Tom Brady earlier this year, Netflix’s live programming team has a willingness to evaluate unconventional ideas, an appetite for broadcasting and the deepest pockets to get them.
And in another interesting twist, Netflix’s presence in the sports space has shown that the league needs the streamer more than Netflix needs it. This is 180 degrees different from traditional networks.
ESPN, Fox, NBC, and CBS will probably survive losing the NFL. However, it is unlikely to be a dominant force in sports entertainment culture. Netflix may have had a helping hand from the NFL games, but without the two Christmas games, it’s hard to believe its earnings report would be much different, given its steady output of shows like the second season of “Squid.” Games” and movies starring A-Listers.
The same goes for Amazon. The major video service is a leader in sports among digital players with NFL and NBA deals. But if Amazon made the decision tomorrow – like they did with their long-term deal – to drop the sport, would they sell fewer boxes of paper towels?
We are in the midst of a major reconfiguration of the way we view sports. The biggest long-term challengers to ESPN’s dominance and traditional networks’ top perch are Amazon and Netflix. Leagues like the NFL want digital players to become more invested in their games, but there’s a long-term problem. Will Netflix shift its strategy to become more sports-focused?
Whether or not Netflix gets the UFC, it’s hard to imagine sports being a boon to Netflix’s relatively new advertising tier.
How this all plays out in the long run could impact not only how we view the game, but also how we make up the sport financially.
(Photo by Joe Sargent / Getty Images)
