There can’t really be much doubting the fact that the fracturing of streaming content and the silos that are being built around that content are not a good thing. Examples of what was an ecosystem that mostly consisted of Netflix and Amazon being ruptured into streaming services offered by content producers themselves, such as Disney for instance, has resulted in frustration in the market for some and resorting back to piracy for others.
Still, the world is moving more and more to streaming versus traditional broadcasts. Late to this party has been live sports, though a ton of movement has happened there, as well. But perhaps this specific environment is one where you would think that the NFL experimenting earlier this month by streaming a playoff game exclusively on a more niche streaming service like NBC’s Peacock might be a bad idea. The numbers the game did, however, seem to indicate otherwise, even as there was a ton of negative feedback and confusion from football fans.
The NFL playoffs started this past weekend, and with it came the first streaming-only playoff game. Usually, premium NFL games like the playoffs are on one of the major TV networks nationwide, but the Dolphin/Chiefs wildcard game was exclusively available on Comcast/NBC’s Peacock streaming service outside. NFL fans weren’t particularly happy about having to sign up for some random streaming service to watch a playoff game, but that didn’t stop many people from actually signing up, with Nielsen logging 23 million average streaming viewers for the game.
NBC says that 23 million viewers make the game “the most streamed event ever in US history” and “a milestone moment in media and sports history.” Nationally, the game was exclusively on Peacock, but local TV broadcasts were still available in the Miami and Kansas City metro areas, so 27.6 million people watched the game. The NFL hasn’t announced the ratings for the other playoff games yet, but last year, the wildcard round averaged 28.4 million viewers per game, so this got in range of that. On paper, this was one of the better games of the weekend, featuring the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and the high-flying Dolphins’ offense, and it was in prime time, so with a traditional broadcast, this was probably due for above-average ratings. Peacock exclusivity reduced the audience somewhat, but it still attained NFL-class numbers.
While the numbers look quite successful, there are so many caveats to all of this that it’s hard to know where to begin. I’ll start with the confusion aspect of this. Many NFL fans that planned to watch this game had no idea ahead of time, despite any marketing or information that was put out, that this game was exclusively streaming on Peacock until they went to watch the game and couldn’t find it. I know; I was one of them. And I imagine a whole bunch of people signed up for the service last minute just to watch the game. I know; I was one of them. And then a whole bunch of those people who were annoyed at a paywalled playoff game in the most popular sport in America likely then went ahead and immediately canceled their subscription. I know; I was…well, you get it.
Then we add to all of this that one-off experiments do not demonstrate a trend. I heard a whole bunch of folks in sports media talking about how the success of all of this might lead the NFL to start making more and more games exclusive to specific streaming services, all in an effort to recapture broadcast contracts that won’t be nearly as lucrative in the future. A sort of pay-per-view situation, except it’s not per-view, but rather an attempt to force the public to sign up for even more niche streaming services all to watch what is essentially a single product. That’s going to piss people off way more than they are now about fractured streaming content. Imagine if you had to sign up for 3 different streaming services to watch a television drama because every third episode was on another service. Nobody would do that.
And the leagues better figure this out, because right now they are what is keeping cable television alive and they are quickly becoming the driving force behind streaming as well.
The NFL is basically the only institution keeping traditional broadcast TV alive. Of the top 100 highest-rated US TV broadcasts in 2023, a staggering 93 of them were NFL games. Lucrative TV contracts will keep most games on broadcast TV for the foreseeable future, but even the NFL is slowly transitioning to streaming. The weekly Thursday Night Football game is now exclusive to Amazon Prime; ESPN+ gets one exclusive game per season, and Peacock has these two games this year. The biggest NFL package, NFL Sunday Ticket, which gives fans about 13 out-of-market games every Sunday, moved from DirecTV to YouTube TV this season. The NFL even has its own streaming platform, NFL+, though it takes a backseat to partner services.
It’s a simple rule of content: you have to make the content product available to the public in roughly the way they want it, make it easy to find and watch, ensure the public knows where to go for the content, and make it reasonably affordable for them to buy and consume it.
Whatever success the Peacock experiment was for the NFL, it certainly doesn’t comport with those rules.