Netflix has the NFL’s Christmas Day games. That has some fans of the four teams involved nervous that the streaming service will have the same technical issues it had for the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight.
The NFL is not.
“I think they have done an incredible job with all their preparations, every piece of what they’re putting in place,” NFL EVP/Media Distribution Hans Schroeder said Wednesday. “The core of it is how the game is going to be produced. They’re going to be produced by CBS. They’re as good as a live-sports production entity as there is in the world with a ton of history of doing the NFL and many other sports. So, unlike even the fight that people look at the fight and maybe look at streaming, there are some production areas that I think they will work through, and that certainly will be in CBS’ hands and we’re incredibly excited about. I think there were some bumps certainly with Netflix, but everything we’ve seen, we think their plan and the work we’re doing alongside them, we’re incredibly confident in and we feel incredibly well prepared for a great day on Christmas Day for our fans, and fans not only here but around the world, so we’re really excited about that.”
Netflix has the Chiefs at the Steelers followed by the Ravens at the Texans on Christmas Day.
While streaming the fight live on Nov. 15, Netflix experienced buffering and freezing issues. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos explained during the UBS conference Tuesday the technical challenge streaming to an “enormous live audience” of 108 million people.
“We were pushing the [internet service provider], every ISP in the world, right to the limits of their own capacity,” Sarandos said, via The Hollywood Reporter. “We were stressing the limits of the internet itself that night. So, we had a control room up in Silicon Valley that was re-engineering the entire internet to keep it during this fight because of the unprecedented demand that was happening.”
Netflix also will stream at least one Christmas Day game in 2025 and 2026 as part of its three-season deal with the NFL.
“We feel incredibly well prepared and incredibly excited about what that partnership is going to look like going forward,” Schroeder said.
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