“Don’t blow it next time…” - me to Netflix after the first Jake Paul fight

Spoiler: They blew it. 

In case you were too busy crying into your soon to be “limited edition “Jim Beam bottles on Christmas instead of watching football… Netflix streamed two-thirds of the NFL’s Christmas Day slate this year, and somehow managed to make America’s sport feel like a dang beta test.

(Source: Facebook) 

And not a cool one. In fact, it was more along the lines of “why does this sound like it’s being broadcast from inside a Yeti cooler?” In short, viewers spent most of the Lions–Vikings wondering if their speakers were broken, their WiFi was cooked, or Netflix had accidentally routed the audio through a submarine. Sprinkle in some mid-game interviews nobody asked for, and suddenly Christmas football felt like a Stranger Things focus group. Which, to be fair, might’ve been the point.

Netflix clearly rolled into this thinking: What if the Manningcast, but with less chemistry and more brand marketing?” So instead of letting the game breathe, they jammed in remote interviews with former players like Emmitt Smith, Clinton Portis, and Cris Carter… right in the middle of live action. Did anyone want that? Ehh not really, especially on Christmas. We all just wanted football… not a random tangent spectacle. In fact, one fan summed it up perfectly on X: “Nobody wants to hear an interview in the middle of an NFL game.” Correct. End of thread. 

(Source: NY Post) 

But, wait! There’s more… 

Then came the WWE crossover. Because when you think “NFL broadcast credibility,” you obviously think Seth Rollins handing out thrones and talking about kings and inspiration like he’s cutting a promo at WrestleMania. For those who missed it, but Netflix streams WWE now, so naturally they turned the Vikings’ postgame moment into a roleplay adjacent brand activation. The players looked confused. The viewers were confused. Somewhere, Roger Goodell felt even more hated than he does on Draft Day. 

Meaning, this is where it gets awkward for Netflix’s broader ambitions. The company wants to be taken seriously as a sports broadcaster. It wants live events. It wants eyeballs that don’t skip ads. It wants to justify the checks it’s writing for NFL rights and whatever else comes next. But Christmas Day made one thing painfully clear: live sports aren’t just “content.” You don’t remix them like a reality show. You don’t cross-promote them like a Marvel trailer. And you definitely don’t interrupt them like a podcast (that is, unless the podcast is “Call Her Daddy”, and in that case, Alex Cooper can interrupt all she wants. Just sayin’.) 

(Source: Giphy) 

But I digress. Prime Video learned this the hard way years ago. Netflix is learning it now, in front of millions of people who just wanted to watch football and digest ham in peace. To be fair, Netflix has pulled off live events before. The Jake Paul fights did numbers… bigly numbers. But boxing fans tolerate chaos. NFL fans do not… at all. Instead, Netflix delivered a broadcast that felt like it was constantly asking: “Are you still watching?” Translation: If this is how Netflix handles the NFL, do we really want them owning more legacy media? Because David Ellison’s been making that exact argument while circling Warner Bros. Discovery LOL.

In the end, it t’was still a great day of football… but Netflix definitely reminded everyone that scale doesn’t equal taste, and money doesn’t buy instinct. Sometimes, the best innovation is knowing when to stop trying to do too much and just let the game play. Until next time, friends… 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News holds positions in Netflix as mentioned in the article.