“I guess we’ll see,” said Brian Rolapp, the chief media and business officer at the NFL. “We have a multiyear agreement now, and I think the focus is making sure that’s great and executing on that. I think with Netflix, it’s sort of similar to other platforms. Our business sort of evolves with it.”

Netflix, for its part, isn’t ready to declare the Christmas games as a harbinger of more NFL on its platform. Riegg said that the company is selective about the type of live sports it streams, preferring a one-off spectacle over a season-long package. “I think it’s got to feel like something that we can truly spotlight and ‘eventize’ for our members and that feels differentiated,” Riegg said.

“Big audience and big conversation,” he added. “Those are the criteria.”

The Christmas doubleheader will satisfy those requirements. The Chiefs-Steelers game, kicking off at 1 p.m., will feature a couple of the sport’s biggest names, Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce, while two-time MVP Lamar Jackson will lead the Ravens against the Texans at 4:30 pm. Not to mention, Netflix has tapped Beyoncé to perform at halftime for the second game, while Mariah Carey will appear in a pre-taped rendition of her iconic holiday tune. The company has also assembled a small army of commentators and entertainers to contribute to its coverage.

The chance to team up with the NFL over the holidays was a case of Netflix being “opportunistic,” Riegg said.

“We’re certainly not getting into sports in the traditional sense. We didn’t bid on the NBA package. It’s not like we’re carrying 18 weeks of the NFL season,” he said. “But when the NFL said, We want to make Christmas Day a thing, we engaged with them because of the checklist of what we look for with these live events. Is it a big audience and does it drive a lot of conversation and buzz?”

With the NFL increasingly moving its content from linear television to digital platforms, Netflix will be the third streamer to exclusively carry a game this season. Amazon’s Prime Video has served as the weekly home of Thursday Night Football since 2022, while the NBC-owned streaming service Peacock aired the week one game between the Green Bay Packers and Philadelphia Eagles in September in São Paulo, Brazil. Prime Video will also stream an NFL playoff game next month, after Peacock became the first streaming service to exclusively show a postseason game last January.

Rolapp said the league has been “deliberate” in its pivot to digital platforms. The NFL exclusively streamed its first game in 2015 on Yahoo, and began simulcasting games on what was then known as Twitter in 2016. Its deal with Amazon for Thursday Night Football, which was inked in 2021 and runs through 2033, was “years in the making,” Rolapp said. “We haven’t rushed into any of this stuff,” he added. “Netflix is no different. That platform has evolved.”

How the NFL’s partnership with Netflix evolves remains to be seen. Rolapp said that Quarterback, the 2023 Netflix docuseries about football’s most important position, was the “genesis” of the league’s relationship with the company. Quarterback and this summer’s follow-up series Receiver allowed Netflix, which says it has 283 million subscribers in more than 190 countries, to flex its global reach.

“They not only resonated here in the United States, but around the world, they had quite a bit of interest,” Rolapp said.

The league’s Christmas deal with Netflix is the first time the NFL has negotiated a game package with worldwide distribution, Rolapp noted. And with the NFL planning to increase the number of international games from five to eight next season, there have been suggestions that some could be carried by Netflix. Rolapp didn’t exactly tamp down that speculation.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we have done our first real global deal for a game package at the same time that we have really focused on how to grow the game internationally, and we are playing more games internationally than we ever have before,” he said. “When you try to grow the sport internationally, it’s important that you actually bring your best product to those territories.”