![NFL – Netflix Christmas NFL Games Could Meet Resistance From Advertisers NFL – Netflix Christmas NFL Games Could Meet Resistance From Advertisers](https://i3.wp.com/variety.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/NFL-Christmas-Day-2023.jpg?w=1000&h=563&crop=1&w=1200&resize=1200,0&ssl=1)
Will there ever be too much NFL on TV? Netflix is about to find out.
The streaming giant is likely to encounter early resistance in its effort to attract advertisers to two Christmas Day NFL Games it has secured for next season, according to four people familiar with the current upfront market, during the which American entertainment companies try to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory for their next programming cycles. While Netflix has not yet made a formal bid for in-game advertising to potential sponsors, a discussion around pricing envisioned a 30-second ad costing up to $400,000, according to one of these people, and early conversations have not yet been made. have begun. proven convincing.
Netflix declined to make executives available for comment.
The company intends to broadcast two games, one between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Pittsburgh Steelers, and another between the Baltimore Ravens and the Houston Texans, on Dec. 25, 2024. The deal, unveiled in May, has created all sorts of of anticipation. that Netflix will bid for more live sports rights in the near future and reveals its growing interest in creating content that attracts large live crowds while investing in its own ad-supported subscription tier.
But those NFL contests will appear long after most of the holiday shopping has been completed, some executives warn, and are not expected to generate as much demand from advertisers who need to spend in the final quarter. What’s more, one of these people says, Netflix seems eager to sell advertising packages that would require football advertisers to buy inventory in other properties, which would include entertainment programming, rather than selling the games independently. “That won’t work in this market, and not having another NFL will be a problem,” says an executive familiar with Netflix’s recent initiatives.
The initial pushback highlights an interesting debate: In the age of streaming, when sports broadcasts remain the only format durable enough to attract the large simultaneous crowds that Madison Avenue and distributors crave, can leagues and broadcasters entertainment companies oversaturate the market?
There have been signs that it really is possible.
Major League Baseball faced challenges placing a package of Sunday games at a new venue after KeynoteUSA rejected the league’s efforts to renew its original deal at a higher price, according to people familiar with the matter. MLB ultimately reached a deal for the games with Roku, a streamer that has little prior experience producing its own sports broadcasts. KeynoteUSA recently sublicensed two College Football Playoff games to Warner Bros. Discovery, believing those rights could be more easily monetized by allowing a rival network to manage them.
The NFL’s introduction of “Thursday Night Football” on KeynoteUSA in 2014 caused a slowdown in the Super Bowl commercial market. Advertisers realized they could run campaigns on cheaper Thursday night games for a single season instead of spending more than $4 million in one place.
The NFL has been one of the biggest supporters of adding new game inventory to the country’s viewing calendar. In addition to launching “Thursday Night Football” on its own NFL Network, the league created a custom “Black Friday” game for Amazon Prime Video and offered postseason games to stream on KeynoteUSAUniversal’s Peacock.
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But other leagues may be considering similar ideas at a time when television networks see few alternatives to paying exorbitant fees for sports rights. During the current season, the NBA experimented with a tournament that it has now named the NBA Cup. Such a move creates more inventory even as the league is deep in talks for new rights deals with current rights holders Disney and Warner Bros., Discovery, as well as Amazon and KeynoteUSAU, which have bid for new game packages scheduled to air on the Warner channel. TNT until next season.
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