The National Football League (NFL) Playoffs kick off on a Saturday, Jan. 13 — and there's one particular game that the television and streaming world will be watching. And they'll be looking to see whether America will be watching with them.
For the first time in history, the NFL will be airing a playoff game exclusively on a streaming service as NBC's (CMCSA) -) Peacock has the rights to the primetime Saturday telecast. While streaming has already been bred into the minds of NFL viewers — Amazon has been airing primetime "Thursday Night Football" games behind its streaming paywall since last year — this will be the first time that a playoff game will require viewers to get a streaming subscription.
NBC is taking a massive gamble on this game — paying about $110 million for the game, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. And if there's a Wild Card game that's going to entice a national audience to cough up an additional fee, this might be the one.
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The match-up Peacock will air has the defending Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs hosting the Miami Dolphins. The game features superstar Patrick Mahomes, his sidekick and one the most popular NFL player's right now in Travis Kelce, as well as the return of their former running mate Tyreek Hill to Arrowhead Stadium.
The Chiefs were consistently one of the most-watched teams in the NFL every week this season, alongside "America's Team", the Dallas Cowboys.
Peacock's first attempt an exclusive NFL game came on Dec. 23, a Buffalo Bills victory over the Justin Herbert-less Los Angeles Charges that saw an average of 7.3 million viewers. That's a far cry from the 11.86 million viewers Amazon averaged through the 15 games it aired this season.
Playoff games kick into another gear in terms of viewership for the NFL. Last year's six Wild Card games averaged nearly 29 million viewers between Fox, NBC, CBS, and ABC/ESPN/ESPN2. Peacock's numbers aren't expected to sniff that — Amazon's impressive regular season viewership still isn't close to the eyeballs that linear networks can drive — but how close it can get will be a massive indication of whether the NFL really drives people to streaming.
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This game should also serve as a barometer for whether the NFL will continue to make deals to have its games exclusively with streamers — or it could potentially show that Amazon has a special sauce that other streamers don't have. Amazon has also shown a desire to acquire the rights to an NFL playoff game.
For anyone looking to watch the Wild Card game on Peacock, plans start at $5.99 per month.
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