Now we know why the NFL changed its position on playing games on Christmas this year.
Via Jessica Toonkel of the Wall Street Journal, Netflix will pay “about $75 million” for each of the two Christmas games to be televised in 2024 — Chiefs at Steelers and Ravens at Texans.
The NFL reportedly started the bidding at $50 million, with a belief that the final price could be up to $100 million per game. The final number, as it often does, splits the difference.
Jill Goldsmith of Deadline.com explains that Netflix V.P. Spencer Wang, without confirming the number, compared the expense to other projects.
“I would characterize each game as roughly the size of one of our medium-sized original films,” Wang said Wednesday.
Of course, original films can be watched over and over and over. NFL games won’t get much re-air traction.
Still, Peacock learned after televising a playoff game in January that plenty of people who added the service kept it. Netflix will be counting on adding customers — and hoping to keep current customers from canceling.
For the NFL, it’s a $150 million windfall, less whatever concessions the league had to make to CBS and/or Fox for taking two games that otherwise would have been played, and televised, that weekend.
