Netflix Will Stream Two NFL Games on Christmas Day

Netflix has signed a deal with the NFL to broadcast two games on streaming this coming Christmas Day.

This year’s games on Netflix will be the Kansas City Chiefs at the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens at the Houston Texans. The games will air live on Netflix on December 25. (Fans of those teams will still be able to watch the games broadcast on television in their local markets and on the NFL+ app.)

Netflix will also air Christmas games in each of the next two years. The NFL did not say what Netflix had paid for the rights to the games. The streaming giant has said they will have their own announcers call the games.

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In recent months, Netflix has been gradually dipping its toes into more and more live programming, much of it involving live sports. After exhibition golf and tennis tournaments, Netflix announced their broadcast of an upcoming boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul; that bout is scheduled to air on the streaming service on Saturday, July 20.

Netflix has also had recent success with reality shows about Formula One and other sports. The company recently made a deal to air WWE’s Monday Night Raw live all around the world; that deal begins in early 2025. Raw had previously been a staple of cable television programming for more than 30 years.

Netflix has also broadcast live events like a Chris Rock standup special and the reunion special for its 2023 season of Love Is Blind.

It is interesting to observe that a company that has built so much of its customer base on giving its users the ability to watch whatever they want whenever they want it —pausing, rewinding, fast-forwarding, replaying things at will, even changing the speed at which the content is screened — is now getting into live television which is, by its very nature, the exact opposite of on-demand streaming.