While discussing the roast of Tom Brady that took place this past weekend on Netflix, WFAN host Boomer Esiason made a prediction that sounded an awful lot like an informed prediction.
“What I think is going to happen, could be wrong, but don’t think I am…Do not be surprised if the NFL and Netflix get in bed for a nice little Christmas Day football games. I would not be surprised.”
Esiason’s partner Gregg Giannotti replied, “Alright, that is interesting. They have not gotten into the live sports thing yet, Netflix, they actually really haven’t done a ton of sports, period…You know what means? More jobs, and a pregame show for Boomer and Gio on Netflix. I’ll give up Christmas for that.”
Last year’s streaming-only playoff game on Peacock showed some of the unique ways the NFL may try to earn extra money on their media rights. For this upcoming season, the NFL has already announced Peacock will stream their week one Friday night game from San Paolo, Brazil and that Prime Video will be the outlet which gets a streaming-only playoff game. When those announcements were made, several speculated that the NFL might try and put a package out for their Christmas Day doubleheader.
“All these other leagues are doing this now, too,” Esiason said. “Everybody’s parceling these things up. Like the NHL, part of it is on TNT, part of it is on ESPN … all these leagues are doing that, and they know there is a fight for these streaming services going on and there’s only going to be a few standing…And we are in the middle of these enormous fights going on now.”
The whole conversation started when Giannotti asked Esiason, “How much do you think Tom Brady got paid for that roast?” His reply, “I would say between $10 and $20 million…He had to get a lot of money for that. To sit through that.”
“You think he could have gotten $20 million for that?” Gio asked. “I wouldn’t doubt it,” Esiason said. “I mean he basically allowed for people to rip into him and it’s all over the place…He is not sitting up there for less than $10 million…You are not doing that unless you are getting paid an enormous amount of money.”
