The NFL will continue expanding its footprint on streaming services in 2024. The league has been dabbling in more streaming exclusives in recent years, from moving Thursday Night Football to Amazon to adding an ESPN+ regular season broadcast. But after moving a playoff game to be a Peacock exclusive this past year, they showed that they’ll offer up some of their biggest games to the highest bidder.
With the NFL schedule getting set to release in full on Wednesday night, they started to offer up some key dates early, including the plan for this year’s Christmas Day slate. After seeing success with weekend Christmas games recently, the league decided to stick with having games on the holiday even when it falls in the middle of the week, like this year when it’s on a Wednesday. The four teams playing on Christmas in 2024 are the Chiefs at Steelers and Ravens at Texans, but the bigger news is that those games will stream on Netflix, which is entering the live sports fray with a top league for the first time.
The NFL Christmas Day games on Netflix will be:
Chiefs v. Steelers
Ravens v. Texans pic.twitter.com/5ollrfQbNt
— Netflix (@netflix) May 15, 2024
This is part of a three-year deal between the NFL and Netflix, which will guarantee the streamer one holiday game each year through 2026.
The league is almost assuredly getting a crazy amount of money for these games — the Peacock playoff game fetched over $100 million — but fan response will likely be similar to how folks felt about that game. Fans will now need four separate services to watch every game in 2024, which is quite the departure from how the NFL operated even five years ago.