Peacock Announces Week 1 NFL Exclusive; Prime Video will officially get its wildcard streaming exclusive, Streamable
The NFL is no longer satisfied with the dominance of linear television viewership. Streaming viewership is the next frontier for the league, and this week the NFL announced it will air another game exclusively on Peacock during the 2024-25 season. The league also confirmed that it will make the Prime Video-exclusive NFL Wild Card game available for the upcoming season and challenged the NBA by announcing that it will again schedule a Christmas game this year, even though the holiday falls on a Wednesday.
- Peacock will broadcast Friday’s game against São Paulo, Brazil during the opening week of the NFL season.
- It has not yet been announced which channel/platform will be awarded this year’s holiday game.
- The NBCUniversal streamer gained 3 million subscribers thanks to its latest exclusive NFL game.
Peacock has acquired the rights to broadcast two NFL games exclusively in 2023: a regular-season game between the Los Angeles Chargers and Buffalo Bills in December and a Wild Card contest featuring the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins in January. The streamer scored another exclusive in 2024, which will be the first-ever league match played in São Paulo, Brazil. Match timing should also be important for Peacock to maintain the momentum expected from the Summer Olympics.
The match will be played during the opening week of the 2024 season, on Friday, September 6. The 2022 NFC champion Philadelphia Eagles will take part, and the second opponent will be announced later. Since the game will be a Peacock exclusive, you won’t be able to watch it on NBC since the Thursday night season opener will take place on September 5.
“It’s exciting for Peacock to present the first-ever NFL regular season game in Brazil as part of an unprecedented three-game primetime presentation on the NFL’s opening weekend,” said Rick Cordella, president of NBC Sports. “Peacock continues to deliver the best sports streaming experience as the game will follow the action of the Paris Summer Olympics and Paralympics, with each event broadcast live on the service.”
The Peacock-exclusive Wild Card game was the target of many fan attacks last season, but from a financial standpoint, it was all NBCU could have hoped for. Data collected by Antenna shows that Peacock gained 3 million subscribers just because of the game, and 78% of those customers remained Peacock subscribers a month after the game’s release.
This is a smart move on NBCU’s part, especially since the game in São Paulo is scheduled to take place just a few weeks after the conclusion of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. Peacock will broadcast every event of the Games live and recently unveiled several exciting new features for this year’s Olympics, including an action-packed show that will immerse viewers in all the action in one day, hosted by NFL RedZone veterans Scott Hanson and Andrew Siciliano. This exclusive NFL game will give sports fans who signed up to Peacock to watch the Olympics a reason to keep their schedule on for at least another month.
What other news did the NFL make this week?
In addition to the new Peacock-exclusive game, the NFL made several other scheduling announcements this week. The first was confirmation of reports that circulated in February that Prime Video would receive its own exclusive wild card game in 2024-2025. Prime Video had initial considerations for the 2023-24 Wild Card game, but rejected them and the content ultimately ended up on Peacock. Seeing how effective NBCU’s broadcast was, Amazon is now ready to try its hand at attracting a similarly large number of new customers with its own exclusive playoff game.
The NFL also announced it would play two games on Christmas Day 2024. The league played three Christmas games in 2023 when the holiday falls on a Monday, but previously said it would not play any games on Christmas Day in 2024 because this year it falls on Wednesday. However, the NFL has officially changed its mind on the decision, which will undoubtedly anger NBA executives who are accustomed to dominating the rankings on Christmas Day with marquee games.
It is not yet clear which streaming service or channel will partner with the NFL to broadcast holiday games. Prime Video has offered the league’s first-ever Black Friday match in 2023, and it should be considered that it has a good chance of hosting a holiday competition; however, it is likely that the league will keep bidding for the match open for as long as possible in order to collect as much money as possible from the winner.
The NFL knows that offering more streaming options is important to attract fans across as many age groups as possible. A recent study found that 71.5% of NFL games are still watched on linear television, but that number is declining as viewers become more comfortable watching games on digital platforms. Encouraging viewers to use streaming platforms like Peacock to watch exclusive games will help further increase this comfort level, and the NFL is once again taking advantage of the opportunities that Peacock provides.
