“They proved that they can handle the NFL,” said Adam Schwartz, svp, director of video investment, sports at media agency Horizon Media.

It’s not the end of advertisers’ questions about the entry of streaming platforms into live sports. Now, media buyers and advertisers’ attention will shift to questions of viewership, price, ad formats — and whether Christmas with the NFL could ever be as big as Thanksgiving or the Super Bowl. 

Clearing the hurdle

Christmas hasn’t traditionally been a big deal for the NFL. Netflix aimed to change that. The platform drafted in both Mariah Carey and Beyoncé, the latter for a 13 minute halftime show, to give its two games the clearest chance of a breakthrough as possible.

A spokesperson for Netflix declined a request for an interview. According to Kevin Everhart, chief growth officer at Experian Consumer Services, one of the brands that advertised against the coverage, part of the platform’s pitch was a promise to bring football to a broader audience than typically associated with linear coverage of the NFL.

“[Netflix] is a little bit novel, in terms of its ability to reach audiences that historically, probably haven’t seen NFL,” he told Digiday. Experian used its ad slots to kick off a new seasonal campaign, “Tackling Life” which focused on personal finance advice.

“That’s part of what we’re trying to do: Drive some incremental reach with our media buys, continue to optimize ways to reach different audiences and just try to be where people are,” he added. Everhart declined to share financial details of its ad deal with Netflix.

The games — featuring the Baltimore Ravens versus the Houston Texans, and Kansas City Chiefs versus the Pittsburgh Steelers — drew an average of 26.5 million U.S. viewers, and a total U.S. audience of 65 million, according to Nielsen.

Though that was less than last year’s Christmas games, broadcast on Fox, ABC and CBS, it surpassed last year’s AFC wild-card game, which drew 23 million viewers for NBCU streamer Peacock, providing further evidence that the gap between linear and streaming audiences is closing (for comparison, the NFL’s average viewership in week one of the 2024-25 season was 21 million, per Nielsen). 

And it cleared the expectations of media buyers and advertisers, which included Google Pixel, Verizon, Fanduel, Snickers, Johnnie Walker and BMW. 

Question of sport

When its streaming competitor Amazon Prime Video first began staging sports broadcasts, advertisers complained audience data wasn’t available quickly enough. Both Amazon and Netflix have learned a thing or two about keeping brands on side since then, though. 

Beyoncé aside, Netflix’s offer to advertisers included a by-the-book approach to the telecast intended to provide “comfort” to the blue chip advertisers it was scoping out, according to eMarketer senior analyst Ross Benes. Production was handled by CBS Sports, while viewership was monitored by Nielsen. 

“It’s clear that they want to put their foot down and claim some land in terms of the live sports space,” said Schwartz.

The one, minor query advertisers had? The quality of the stream itself. Following the patchy telecast of the Paul/Tyson fight Netflix’s advertising clients, including Experian — which also advertised during the boxing match — spoke with the platforms’ representatives about its plans to avoid similar issues on Christmas.

Everhart declined to share specific details of his conversations with Netflix staffers, but said: “We were provided enough of an assurance, as well as feedback from the Netflix team, that we felt confident.”

On the day, those assurances were vindicated. According to one senior media buyer, it provides another “tipping point” for any advertisers still flirting with advertising against streaming live sports. It capped a year of such tipping points, from the Olympics on Peacock to Amazon’s introduction of shoppable ad inventory against its Thanksgiving NFL telecasts.

While they’ll still have questions to ask about streamers’ sports offerings, they’ll be about audience expectations, ad formats and the action itself, according to Kevin Collins, evp strategic sports investment at IPG Magna. 

“At the end of the day, it’s about scale, reach, engagement and and the power of sports and the content  that’s on the air,” he said.

Each of the major streaming platforms have pursued sports content as a means of attracting subscribers and advertisers. Netflix’s latest addition, WWE Raw, debuted this week.

Peter Naylor, ex-head of global ad sales at Netflix, noted that sports serves two important functions for streamers — stickiness, which helps curb subscriber churn, and reach, which helps with the ad sales effort.

“Look at Netflix and the arrival of WWE — if you’re a fan, you’re not going to cancel your subscription, right? You’re going to watch it every Monday night. So sports are sticky. And secondly, sports offer massive reach. Advertisers want reach,” he said.

“Sports gives reach in brand-safe environments, so sports helps both of the business models.”

Christmas future

Although the attention of holiday viewers has traditionally fallen to the NBA, Horizon’s Schwartz said there’s an opportunity to turn Christmas into an NFL calendar moment on a similar scale as Thanksgiving football. 

“I won’t say there’s a hole there… the NBA is doing fantastically. [But] the NFL is just a different animal,” he said.

Should Netflix succeed in beating 2024’s viewership figures next Christmas, it could cement the occasion as one closely associated with football viewing, and create new real estate for brands searching for more ways to reach mass audiences. 

According to eMarketer’s Benes, that’s unlikely to draw spending away from classic tentpoles like the Super Bowl, though. Netflix isn’t exactly offering a value menu, with 30-second slots priced at $625,000 each, according to Adweek. But that’s still a lot less than the $7 million barrier to entry at last year’s Super Bowl. 

“The overall pot would just increase,” he said. “If a brand is committed to being in the Super Bowl, they’re going to do everything they can to get that spot, no matter how much it cost. Even if they pay quite a bit for a Netflix ad, I don’t think that would deter them.”