Netflix Is Going Live. The Networks Should Be Scared.

After Netflix secured NFL Christmas games rights, it’s clear the streamer is moving fast into the sphere of live broadcasting—a historic shift for a company that’s never made “appointment viewing” part of its business model

• By
  
  A.A. Dowd
  
• on May 20, 2024 9:05 am

Netflix just called an audible. On Wednesday, rumors of a new playbook for the streaming giant materialized: Live football is coming to the platform this Christmas. Netflix will play exclusive host to a doubleheader of yuletide NFL games this season and will stream at least one holiday game in both 2025 and 2026. If you’re a traditional cable customer hoping to spend this Christmas watching the Chiefs take on the Steelers or the Texans face off against the Ravens, you’ll have to join a subscriber base now in the neighborhood of 270 million.

This newly inked deal arrives on the heels of this month’s Netflix Is a Joke, a comedy festival in Los Angeles showcasing several high-profile live events available to subscribers. These included a new Katt Williams stand-up special, a star-studded roast of Tom Brady, and six nights of John Mulaney’s fledgling talk-show experiment, Everybody’s in L.A. Judging from the sheer volume of words written about each of them, this week of live comedy was a success, regardless of how many users watched in real time.

All of this points to a reality that should make the big television networks pretty nervous: Netflix is moving fast into the sphere of live broadcasting—a historic shift for a company that’s never made “appointment viewing” part of its business model. Traditionally, Netflix has seemed content to serve as an alternative to the live-TV model. This is the company that, after all, popularized binge viewing, serving an audience that would rather tear through a new show over a long weekend than follow it week to week. The bread and butter of Netflix has always been its library of licensed reruns, the antithesis of the one-and-done events the legacy networks offer.

Netflix has flirted with the live-TV space before. Last year, the streamer rolled out its first live broadcast, a stand-up special from Chris Rock. The company also announced intentions to livestream the cast reunion of its reality sensation Love Is Blind—a blatant bid for the audience that tunes in religiously to Bravo’s similar slate of season-closing panel discussions. But a technical hiccup killed that plan: After a bug in the system shut out viewers, the special ended up dropping, rather anticlimactically, as a normal taped episode on the platform the following morning. With this month’s slate of comedy programming, Netflix seems to have worked out the live-broadcast kinks; one wonders whether its smooth performance helped inch negotiations with the NFL over the goal line.

This deal especially marks a sudden change in direction. As recently as last summer, Netflix was reiterating its reluctance to get into the sports bidding war. “Sports adjacent” was its official approach to athletic content, courting the jock crowd with a slate of splashy docuseries rather than actual games, for the most part. The major leagues charge an arm and a leg, after all, for access. Games don’t have an extended shelf life the way a cherished content library does. (Very few would return to an old hockey game beyond the week it airs.) And plenty of Netflix’s competitors have already staked their claim on that audience: Amazon won the streaming rights for Thursday Night Football, Apple is the new home for Friday Night Baseball, and Peacock has exclusive access to the English Premier League.

But even before the NFL news, Netflix had gradually dabbled in the idea of becoming a real destination for sports fans. News of those Christmas Day games follows a series of smaller moves in the live-sports space: a golf tournament, a tennis event, a deal to make Netflix the new home for WWE’s Raw, and an upcoming publicity stunt boxing match pitting Mike Tyson against YouTuber Jake Paul (which feels like an explicit challenge to cable’s legacy pay-per-view model). In working out an arrangement with the NFL, the most watched and most profitable sports league in America, Netflix isn’t dabbling anymore—it’s throwing its hat into the ring and gunning for one of the last remaining domains broadcast television controls.

It’s no mystery why Netflix would want to finally become a player in that arena. Since it introduced its ad-supported plan, wherein subscribers pay a lower fee in exchange for the indignity of having commercial breaks interrupt their Suits marathons, ad revenue has become an important part of the company’s financials. And nothing draws advertisers quite like sporting events. Football also represents an opportunity to tap into TV’s most reliable eyeball magnet (per Nielsen, NFL games are regularly the highest-rated programming of whichever week they air) and to increase Netflix’s already robust lead in subscribers. In that sense, the company doesn’t have to be the exclusive home of the NFL or even the only yuletide destination for pigskin. (Next year’s Christmas falls on a Thursday, so Amazon will air a prime-time game as part of its TNF package.) Football is just a feather in the company’s cap—another way Netflix is cementing its status as an industry leader.

More ominously, the NFL deal and the company’s general move into live content feel like shots fired in a larger war. They exemplify the existential threat Netflix poses to the old power structure of television. It seems that for a while now the goal has been not just to compete with the networks but to eventually replace them. Last summer, streaming rose to claim nearly 40 percent of total television hours watched in the United States. Cable providers can see the shift happening. It’s why companies like Comcast are now taking an “If you can’t beat them, join them” approach, announcing streaming-service bundles—like a forthcoming Netflix-Peacock-Apple package—that will cut them into the profit flow. Whether they’re pivoting to meet the realities of the moment or contributing to their own eventual obsolescence remains to be seen.

The question is: What does traditional broadcast television still have to offer TV watchers that they can’t get through streaming services? Namely, sports and talk shows. Netflix doesn’t need to be the instant industry leader in the field of live entertainment. It just needs to slowly elbow the networks out of the equation. Should the big four—ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC—lose their hold on, say, a mass cultural event like the Super Bowl … well, that would be the ball game, wouldn’t it? Streaming will have won.

To be clear, the major networks are still the go-to destination for the majority of the NFL’s schedule. But by inching into the live-TV game, Netflix moves closer to the monoculture monopoly it’s seeking. In the company’s version of a perfect world, the platform would be a one-shop stop—a hub for every movie, show, sporting event, or entertainment option available. And that should be a scary thought for everyone, not just the executives at NBC or HBO. It’s said that when companies compete, the consumer wins. So what happens when there’s no more competition, when one company decisively wins? Setting aside how that would affect the kinds of art and entertainment that get made at all, there’s the price to consider. If you thought cable was expensive, wait until you see the cost of the only game in town.