Netflix doesn’t just want to be part of the conversation when it comes to live sports — it wants to own it. With Christmas Day NFL games, blockbuster boxing events, and a wildly successful launch of WWE Raw, the streamer’s bold (and very deliberate) sports play has made one thing clear to customers and to clients: This isn’t a casual experiment. This is Netflix looking to rewrite the playbook on live sports.
For years, live sports coverage has belonged to legacy giants like ESPN, Fox, CBS, and NBC — but as of this year, Netflix’s quarterly earnings calls are now required viewing for sports media analysts. The streamer is suddenly being tracked the same way Disney or Comcast is. That alone signals how far they’ve come.
But what’s the endgame here? How far are they really going? That’s still unclear. Is this about cherry-picking prestige events to fuel ad growth — or a sign they’re ready to enter the ring for major, long-term rights deals? At the moment, Netflix’s biggest rights partnership is with WWE, which it doesn’t even classify under “sports.” Even if it’s still real to us, damn it.
Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-CEO, was asked directly about upcoming rights for MLB, UFC, and Formula 1 on the most recent earnings call. He didn’t give a straight answer but said, “Our live event strategy is unchanged, and we remain really focused on the big breakthrough events. Our audiences love them, and so anything, anything we chase, in the event space or the sports space, is a deal that has to make economic sense as well.”
What Does Netflix Want from Live Sports?
That’s easy enough to understand. Netflix doesn’t want every game, every week — they just want the big ones, the ones that come with moments you can see coming. Sarandos pointed to last November’s Jake Paul event — specifically, the Amanda Serrano vs. Katie Taylor undercard — as an example of what they’re aiming for. “It was the most watched women’s sporting event in U.S. history,” he said.
And they’re getting them. This past Christmas, Netflix aired two NFL games — and according to their shareholder letter, they saw retention rates comparable to their biggest original hits. Spencer Neumann, the company’s CFO, backed that up: “Retention characteristics for the members that came in for those big events was similar to members that joined for other big titles. No meaningful changes to our retention story, which… no news on that front is good news.”
For a company that just stopped reporting quarterly subscriber numbers (last known total: over 300 million globally), those statements are doing a lot of heavy lifting. The message: people showed up for sports — and stayed.
- Monday Night Raw has landed on Netflix’s Global Weekly Top 10 every week since launch.
- It’s ranked in the Top 10 in 29 countries.
- In India, RAW streams live with Hindi commentary — a sign Netflix is looking to go global with event programming.
And when it comes to events, the next one is already set: a rematch between Serrano and Taylor this weekend. If it outpaces the first one, it’ll give Netflix even more ammo to argue that single-night sports spectacles can move the cultural needle just as hard — if not harder — than season-long commitments.
But will they come for the big fish? Not at the moment. As rights for the NFL’s Sunday Ticket, UFC, and others come up for grabs in the next few years, Netflix may finally step onto the battlefield. But that means they’ve got targets on their backs now, as reports surfaced that Fox and ESPN barred their talent from participating in Netflix’s Christmas games. That led Netflix to partner with CBS instead, and possibly lay the groundwork for future in-house production.
So next time the rights packages come up for grabs, keep an eye on Netflix, because they’re in the game.