As the NFL schedule was released and more games than ever will be on various streaming networks, many sports radio stations hit on the topic of the number of outlets airing NFL football. In New York, Evan Roberts and Tiki Barber discussed it during Evan & Tiki on WFAN.
“The NFL is heat checking themselves by saying, ‘we can play a game at any time of the day and people will watch,'” said Roberts. “They tried 9:30 in the morning, people will watch. They tried Black Friday, people will watch. Now they’ve invaded Christmas. But here’s the other thing they are doing as a heat check. They are now testing you to buy every single streaming service known to man so you can watch every game. You need Peacock, you need Amazon Prime Video, you need YouTube TV or at least a subscription to the Sunday Ticket…and now you need Netflix.”
Tiki Barber responded by saying he thinks the Netflix deal is the “most genius” as he talked about the size of the subscription base and where they come from.
“I know this just from being around the NFL for so many years, their goal is to find the incremental viewer,” Barber said. “Like the incremental income comes from overseas. Their biggest growth is going to come, not in the United States because it’s saturated, if you’re a fan, you’re already watching, you’re already engaged…It’s a way to influence the incremental viewer that is not in the United States so Netflix, to me, is the biggest [deal] they have done.”
Roberts replied, “I get why the NFL does it. I get why the streaming services do it. I get the business of it. But it’s very difficult to ask your fans to have every single streaming network in the world, it just is.”
They discuss what the total cost would be if you wanted to watch every NFL game this year and were given the total of $986.
Roberts added, “They are making you spend so much freakin’ money to watch all of these games, but guess what? We do it!”
