Netflix winning the rights to two Christmas Day NFL games this season marks the addition of yet another new media partner for the league, which just began fresh rights deals worth a combined $110 billion last year. The streamer will pay $150 million for the two holiday broadcasts, per The Wall Street Journal, and also acquired the rights to one Christmas Day game in 2025 and ’26.

Next year, Christmas falls on a Thursday. Netflix will air a game in the afternoon before Amazon gets a prime-time showcase as part of its Thursday Night Football package, Hans Schroeder, the league’s executive vice president of media distribution, confirmed on a call with reporters. 

This is the new-age NFL, where anything goes, if the price is right. Schroeder said the league’s plans these days is to “keep some of our inventory to deploy strategically,” which has been buoyed by greater flexibility in this new set of media-rights deals. “In the old deals, almost every game started as part of one of the two packages on Sunday afternoon and then we had to pull them out,” he said. “With [these] new deals, there’s still a commitment we have to Fox and CBS that their packages feel like an NFC package and AFC package, but we have much greater flexibility with how we schedule games.”

So, by all indications, the NFL is open for business moving forward, even if that means longtime media partners get fewer and fewer game broadcasts. “They know we’re going to continue to work and make sure we deliver great schedules to them and have a great partnership with each of them, but also add our partners where we think it makes sense,” Schroeder said.

New Normal: Quick Turnarounds

Another wrinkle of the 2024 NFL schedule will be more teams playing multiple games on short rest, thanks to relaxed restrictions that went into effect last year. This fall, 13 teams will play two games with only three days of rest (i.e., game on Sunday, off the next three days, and then play again on Thursday), whether that be a combination of TNF games, Thanksgiving Day matchups, and Christmas Day games.

“At the end of the day, it makes the national television schedule stronger,” said Mike North, the NFL’s vice president of broadcast planning. That has resulted in what North called Amazon Prime Video’s strongest TNF schedule yet.

“If you think about partners like NBC and ESPN, the strength of their package is the really top-tier teams multiple times in a year,” said North, noting Amazon didn’t have that luxury the previous two seasons. “I’m not sure we’re gonna be consistently at five or six teams twice each on Amazon; that might be a bridge too far, year after year.”

One of the foremost investment firms in sports sees a big opportunity to build a new sneakerhead-type fan culture around soccer jerseys, and it is putting some serious money behind the notion.

The Chernin Group—which has invested in entities such as Barstool Sports, the Premier Lacrosse League, the Action Network, Collectors, and Dapper Labs—has put $38.5 million into Classic Football Shirts, a U.K.-based seller of vintage jerseys. Founded in 2006, Classic Football Shirts has steadily built a global business specializing in match-worn, hard-to-find, and other coveted jerseys. 

Expanding the company’s U.S. business, currently accounting for just 15% of sales, is a particular focus of the investment. The Chernin Group sees several macro-level trends and upcoming events fundamentally aiding that effort, including the forthcoming 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympics that will be held in North America, the ongoing growth of MLS and the NWSL, FIFA’s developing moves to start allowing European pro leagues to play official matches outside of their own home territories, and the ongoing boom in sports collectibles.

“We fell in love with football culture, the fandom around the game, and the connective tissue between teams and fans,” TCG partner Greg Bettinelli told Front Office Sports. “We also believe we’re about to see an unleashing of interest in North America in the sport through all these events that are happening.”

Bettinelli previously invested in GOAT, a high-end marketplace for sneakers and apparel. Classic Football Shirts operates primarily online and has a sizable social media presence. But it also has physical locations in London and Manchester, U.K., opened a pop-up shop this week in New York, and is now planning permanent U.S. stores both there and in Los Angeles.

Caitlin Clark makes her home debut for the Indiana Fever on Thursday night in a matchup against the New York Liberty that will also tip off Amazon’s 21-game slate of exclusive WNBA broadcasts this season. No team will be featured on Prime Video more times than the Fever over the next seven weeks, as Indiana’s three appearances on Amazon in May and June are tied for a league high, along with the Liberty and Chicago Sky.

Amazon, which signed a multiyear media-rights extension with the WNBA ahead of the season, will be hoping for audiences like the Fever drew Tuesday night, when 2.12 million people tuned in to Clark’s professional debut on ESPN2. That was ​​the league’s most-viewed game in 23 years, and the most-watched WNBA game on ESPN platforms ever, including the playoffs.

Specific viewership figures for WNBA games on Prime Video last season were not released, but the league and streamer did say that the 2023 Commissioner’s Cup final on Amazon doubled the audience from the ’22 championship game broadcast on the platform. Despite the lack of reported numbers, Amazon was still able to bring on AT&T as a sponsor of its WNBA streams this year.

Follow the Leader

Amazon’s early-season strategy of relying on hype around Clark is a league-wide trend. The Fever’s first four games are being nationally televised or streamed, with Scripps Sports’ over-the-air channel Ion and ABC getting the next cracks at Indiana broadcasts this weekend.

Meanwhile, the Atlanta Dream just became the third team to use a home game against the Fever as a chance to sell even more tickets. Two Indiana-Atlanta games scheduled at 3,500-seat Gateway Center Arena at College Park will now be played June 21 and Aug. 26 at State Farm Arena, the home of the NBA’s Hawks, which holds nearly 17,000 fans for basketball. Previously, the Las Vegas Aces and Washington Mystics announced home games against the Fever would move to venues with larger capacities in their markets.