Why Sports Leagues Are Betting Big on Streaming’s Reach

One of the biggest sports media stories coming out of the NFL owners meetings is the league announcing a Christmas Day tripleheader. Just as important is who will be showing the games: Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

Only four years after Prime scored the first exclusive NFL game package with Thursday Night Football, the league is turning to two giant streamers, not linear TV networks, to complete its attempted yuletide takeover from the rival NBA. Despite Netflix passing on a chance to bid for the NFL Draft, it’s also likely the Shield will add a giant streamer like Google/YouTube to its coverage starting in 2026. 

It wasn’t that long ago that leagues like the NFL and NBA viewed streaming more as a futures bet. Given the disparity in reach versus linear broadcast and cable TV networks, streaming was seen as the future, not the present. So leagues experimented with live games on streaming platforms to see if they could attract elusive younger viewers—and to prepare for the day when streaming overtook traditional TV. 

Now, it feels like the pendulum is swinging. Old-fashioned free over-the-air networks are back en vogue because they reach more than 100 million homes. And leagues are increasingly getting into bed with streamers because they want access to their audiences both in the U.S. and worldwide. 

Netflix’s previous Christmas Day doubleheaders averaged 26.5 million viewers, and the platform boasts more than 300 million global subscribers. Prime has more than 180 million subscribers in the U.S. and more than 200 million worldwide. Amazon’s TNF and other shows reach more than 200 million monthly viewers, according to Jeff Bezos’s company. The NBA will likely counter the NFL’s Christmas invasion with its own reach play: putting all five of its Christmas games on linear TV networks ABC and ESPN.

“It’s funny, not long ago people were talking about streamers as presenting a challenge in terms of reach. Now the largest streamers are becoming a reach play. It’s crazy how quickly it changed,” says Sports Media Advisors CEO Doug Perlman.

“They were talking about streamers having to pay a premium for rights because they didn’t offer the same kind of reach. Now we see leadership at leagues and other properties talking about some streamers as a reach play. They have large subscriber bases, many of whom are not in the pay TV universe, so streaming is the only way to reach them.”

Former Fox Sports executive Bob Thompson noted leagues want streamers’ international reach. Netflix’s Chiefs-Steelers stream on Christmas Day ranked in the weekly top 10 in 72 countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

As Thompson noted: “You can reach the whole world through one distributor as NBA did with Amazon and WBD/Max. [It] allows you to basically not have to go country by country to sell your package—which is very costly and time-consuming for the leagues.”

To be clear, streaming is no panacea. Just ask Major League Soccer. The jury’s out on MLS’s 10-year deal with Apple TV, given it has around 45 million U.S. subscribers. Yes, the addition of global superstar Lionel Messi has been a huge boost. But the recent comments of some anonymous GMs to The Athletic raised questions about whether the league should put more games on traditional TV. 

As one GM said: “I think we have to be on more linear outlets. We have to be on ABC, NBC, Fox more regularly because I think a lot more people watched our games when we were in that space. I think Apple and the whole streaming thing is really innovative, and it’s probably where things will be going, but I don’t think that MLS is the leader of that.”

If you look at recent deals such as the NBA’s 11-year, $77 billion cycle of media-rights contracts, the strategy seems to be for leagues to have a foot in all media worlds. Rather than putting all their eggs in one basket, leagues want a mix of broadcast, cable, and streaming platforms. That’s why the NBA will split its U.S. media rights among Disney’s ABC (broadcast), sister network ESPN (cable), Prime (streaming), ESPN’s upcoming “Flagship” direct-to-consumer platform (streaming), and Peacock (streaming) starting with the 2025–2026 season.

“Rights sellers like the idea of multiple packages as it helps them by being on a number of different types of platforms as opposed to all of their games on one technology,” Thompson says. “Hence, you have linear OTA and cable, streaming, etc. It’s very important during a time of transition like we are seeing in the media business at this point. As a rights seller, you need to be wherever your fans might be consuming your product.”