Netflix may be open to scoring more NFL games. The company’s CFO Spencer Neumann addressed the possibility of expanding its partnership with the league during Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media and Telecom Conference.
On Christmas Day of 2024, Netflix aired two NFL games, marking one of the first times the streamer had aired a major sporting event. As part of its current deal, the streamer is set to air at least one holiday game in both 2025 and 2026. Netflix has long maintained that they’re happy with their current strategy around live events, a point that Neumann emphasized on Wednesday. But during a recent interview with “The Town,” Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria said she would be interested in Netflix expanding its NFL offerings if, in five years, the league opted out of its current deal. Specifically, Bajaria said she would be interested in securing the rights to the Sunday afternoon football games.
“Never say never,” Neumann said. “If there’s a way to make economic sense and business sense about a broader package of sports, we remain open to it. But it’s not something that’s in our near-term horizon or something we see a clear path to.”
Neumann also emphasized that Bajaria gave that response while answering a string of rapid-fire questions, many of which were hypothetical.
“At the end of the day, our strategy has not changed. We are in the live event business, and sports is part of those live events,” Neumann said. “We love the NFL. We love the NFL on Christmas Day … It was the largest streaming audience in the regular season for an NFL game in the U.S., so it was awesome. But that’s kind of where we are right now. We want to keep finding these great eventized moments.”
The C-suite executive emphasized that the Jake Paul v. Mike Tyson fight was one of those “eventized moments” as was “The Roast of Tom Brady” and John Mulaney’s talk show “Everybody’s in LA.” In addition to its upcoming NFL holiday games, Netflix is also airing new episodes of “WWE RAW” and is moving forward with another live talk show from Mulaney, titled “Everybody’s Live.”
The CFO noted that these projects make up a “relatively small” percentage of Netflix’s content spend as well as a “small percentage” of the streamer’s viewing hours. “But not all view hours are creating created equal,” he added.
“We are in those big eventized moments. We see with that it drive the core things we’re trying to do in terms of entertainment, value to members and acquisition. There’s more conversation happening,” Neumann said. “We also believe it’ll drive even better retention over time for our service.”
