The National Football League received plenty of criticism from fans this past season for putting the playoff game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins on Peacock. Unfortunately for those critics, NFL streaming games will become far more prevalent moving forward.
NBC agreed to pay the NFL $110 million last year for the exclusive streaming rights to a single playoff game. The company hoped that having a playoff matchup between two of the best teams in football would drive up subscriptions to the streaming service Peacock.
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It’s become an increasingly popular approach for companies in recent years. In Disney’s multi-billion dollar TV rights deal with the NFL, the corporation received a guarantee for one NFL game to be exclusively available on ESPN+ during the regular season. Similarly, Amazon is paying approximately $1 billion annually for the exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football.
While cable television is still the driving source of league revenue and TV ratings for pro football, commissioner Roger Goodell has also led efforts to increase the number of NFL streaming games. Peacock’s exclusive broadcast of the AFC Wild Card Game this past season was the latest example and more are likely to come based on recent data.
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Did the Peacock NFL experiment work?
In the days following the Chiefs’ playoff victory over the Dolphins, it was announced that Peacock averaged 23 million viewers for its broadcast. While the data was boosted by viewership included from NFL+ and local NBC affiliates in Kansas City and Miami, it set a record for the most-watched event ever on a streaming service.
The viewership alone on a platform that required a $5 payment for access to the broadcast made it a success for both the NFL and NBC already. However, in the months since, the company has evidently been experiencing even greater financial gain from it.
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A new study by Antenna, as reported by Barrett Sports Media, found that Peacock retained 71 percent of its new subscribers who had signed up during a three-day window leading up to the broadcast of the AFC Wild Card Game. For context, the study found that 3 million users became subscribers leading up to that game and there was only a 29 percent churnover rate of that group.
The study perfectly captures why there will be more NFL streaming games in the future. Amazon already agreed to pay $120 million for the rights to a playoff game in 2024 and Peacock will be a partner with the league moving forward. Considering the NFL’s long-term goal is to make $25 billion in revenue annually, fans will either have to sign up for multiple streaming services and a standard cable package to have access to NFL games throughout the regular season and playoffs.
