The National Football League's push into streaming is paying off and helping to expand its fan base in the United States and around the world.
Hans Schroeder, the NFL's executive vice president of media distribution, said Tuesday at the CNBC x Boardroom sports business event Game Plan that the league's recent string of exclusive streaming deals with media companies shows its effort to grow its audience.
When the NFL signed an 11-year, $111 billion broadcast rights deal in 2021, streaming was already part of the mix. “Thursday Night Football” found its exclusive home on AmazonPrime Video under that deal, while other traditional media streaming partners got the green light to start streaming games on their services.
And that was just the beginning. The following year, the NFL's “Sunday Ticket” package, which allows viewers to watch out-of-market games, was taken over by GoogleIt's YouTube TV. ComcastNBCUniversal began streaming “Sunday Night Football” games on Peacock alongside its regular broadcast, and later landed an exclusive Wild Card game that would only air on its streaming service. The streaming giant Netflix It then secured a deal to broadcast matches on Christmas Day, starting this year.
“I think these last steps are the last of a journey that goes back probably 15 years ago, when we had a meeting with Steve Jobs and a small group of us,” Schroeder said, referring to when the former Apple The CEO showed the group a preview version of the iPhone and described how it would affect consumers. “That led us, in part, to retain the rights to live games on mobile phones.”
Schroeder said that was the first of several steps the NFL took to get to where it is now, where much of its media rights strategy is centered on streaming.
The NFL wild-card game that aired exclusively on Peacock earlier this year was a sign that the strategy is paying off. It is considered the most-streamed live event in history with 27.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen.
“I think for us that was perhaps the most transformative moment in recent years where we were able to put on a Wild Card game, one of the truly most valuable and most watched games of the year. [on Peacock]”, Schröder said.
The expansion of streaming has extended into this season. Last week, the first NFL game in Brazil was available exclusively on Peacock, with an average of 14 million viewers.
“I give the NFL a lot of credit for putting on the white coat and experimenting with us,” NBC Sports president Rick Cordella said at the Game Plan event.
He noted that Peacock's sports strategy began with its launch in 2020 with games from the English Premier League, along with other sports such as the NFL, and will continue to grow in the 2025-26 season with NBA games.
Similarly, Lori Conkling, YouTube's global head of TV, film and sports partnerships, said during Tuesday's session that the data the company has across its various platforms shows high sports viewership and underscores why “Sunday Ticket” made sense as an offering.
Most of the NFL's broadcast rights deals have been struck with traditional broadcast partners. Live sports broadcasts have maintained strong viewership on traditional television, even as consumers abandon cable for streaming services. The majority of viewership still comes from traditional television, according to ratings data.
Schroeder said Tuesday that the NFL’s strategy exists in both the traditional television world and the streaming world. Still, the league has said it wants to grow its fan base and move in the same direction as the consumer, which is toward streaming. The league has also been trying to expand beyond its U.S. presence, and playing games overseas is only part of the equation.
“The Netflix deal will be perhaps the first of its kind that is truly global,” Schroeder said. “And I think as far as we're concerned, there's an expectation that our global audience alone could rival what a window in the United States would do.”
Netflix will stream NFL games for the next three years, with two games airing on the platform this year and at least one matchup in both 2025 and 2026.
Disclosure: Comcast's NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.
