Peacock’s NFL Playoff Exclusive Worked. But At What Cost?

The positive headlines were everywhere the day after Peacock’s exclusive NFL playoff game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins. A “record” 23 million people streamed the game on Saturday night, potentially showing how the NFL’s streaming future won’t cut into playoff audiences too much.

And while that number was still nowhere near the 35.8 million NBC viewers that watched Sunday’s Detroit Lions win over the Los Angeles Rams, or the 40 million that tuned into the Green Bay Packers’ upset over the Dallas Cowboys, it was respectable enough to tell everyone involved that it’s repeatable.

The “it” here, of course, is what was essentially a pay-per-view model for the NFL Playoffs, much to the chagrin of fans everywhere.

Puck and other outlets have already pointed aspects of this out, too. Peacock leveraged the NFL to drive millions of sign-ups, and with an offer of just $29.99 for a full-year, may have minimized churn in the short-term as well. But what happens next January, if there isn’t another Peacock-exclusive game? Or if even if there is, how valuable are these audiences if they’re gone after the final whistle.

Peacock and parent company NBCUniversal will take the payment, sure. The real value from any subscribers — football-related or not — comes from how much they watch afterward, however, relative to their value to advertisers. If Peacock or another streaming service (Amazon Prime Video/Paramount+/ESPN+/Tubi) goes the exclusive route again, the same questions will apply afterward, too. It’s great that you got a ton of subscribers out of this. Now, what are you doing with and for them after to make it worth the potential hit to goodwill it creates?

Because that is the real long-term test here, for both the NFL and its various media partners. Many fans felt exploited over the weekend because they weren’t previous subscribed to Peacock, and had no intention to without the forced payment for the game. In essence, what used to be a free over-the-air playoff game every year to-date turned into a pay-per-view transaction. The fact that it worked for Peacock and the NFL means it’ll likely happen again. And maybe becomes a more frequent occurrence.

That part is where fans will really start to bristle. But it does fit in with how the NFL’s continually diced up its lucrative media rights over the years. Sunday afternoons expanded to Monday Night Football in the 1970s, and then Sunday Night Football in the 1990s. Thursday nights were tacked on in the last decade or so. And all of these have been their own separate media packages to increase payouts for the league.

To-date, the only aspect of the playoffs that was “separate” was the Super Bowl, but a) that didn’t impact fans and b) that’s folded into the media rights agreements already. If the playoffs become another piece of the NFL’s behemoth media rights to be sold off, that’s already a tough pill for media companies. But if you tell these companies, which have been over-leveraged in the shift to streaming, that these popular games can be used to drive subscriber numbers? Well, they’re probably all-in.

But again, at what cost?

Even if Peacock and other future streaming-exclusive partners retain every subscriber, how many viewers are they losing by moving games away from over-the-air broadcast television? And that’s not just looking at fans boycotting on supposed principles, mind you. But from a financial standpoint, there are many fans (or would-be viewers) without the means to pay up for playoff games.

At its peak, the NFL stopped being an everyman’s sport long ago, with ticket prices outside the reach of many, Sunday Ticket costing hundreds of dollars per season, and watching every game also requiring a cable subscription and a Prime Video sub as well. Yet, the playoffs existing largely on broadcast TV has at least kept the biggest games accessible, thus making fandom accessible as well.

A pay-per-view playoff future endangers that, even more than the demands of an Amazon Prime sign-up for Thursday Night Football already did.

If any league could get away with it, the NFL would be the one, of course. Still, you have to wonder if testing the limits of U.S. viewers’ passion for football — and their patience with both the league and its media partners — is the wisest idea, especially as consumers appear eager to find places to cut costs for TV viewing.

As the NFL’s competition in the U.S. is seemingly making it cheaper to watch games, not more expensive (the NBA greatly reduced the price of League Pass in 2022, and the NHL has most of its live game folded into ESPN+), we’ll see if this is the move that spurs a shift in audiences’ sports priorities.