Kansas City, Missouri – This weekend’s wild-card matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins will be available exclusively through paid subscription services, leaving NFL fans outside of local viewing areas to navigate paywalls in order to watch the game. The game, which is scheduled for 8 p.m. ET on Saturday at Arrowhead Stadium, is the first playoff matchup in league history to be aired exclusively on a streaming network. The move has received criticism from fans and even Chiefs defensive end Charles Omenihu, but it may be a sign of things to come as the NFL and NBC explore new strategies to increase viewer engagement.
The game will be shown on the NBC streaming service Peacock or the NFL+ app, requiring viewers to pay a subscription fee. Peacock is NBC’s video streaming service that delivers content exclusively over the internet. It offers live sports, movies, and TV series. The service has a “Premium” subscription tier for $5.99 a month that includes live sports, and a no-ad “Premium Plus” tier for $11.99 a month.
Peacock’s sports offerings extend beyond NFL games. It also broadcasts sports like the Premier League, Olympics, WWE, Big Ten football and basketball, golf, and motorsports, among others. The platform attracts a large audience, with around 30 million subscribers and a 75 percent increase in subscriptions compared to last year.
While Saturday’s game marks the first exclusive streaming of an NFL playoff game, it is not the first time the league has experimented with this approach. Peacock previously exclusively broadcasted a regular-season game between the Buffalo Bills and Los Angeles Chargers, attracting an average of 7.3 million viewers. The success of previous streaming experiments, like Amazon Prime’s “Thursday Night Football,” which averaged 11.86 million viewers last year, has prompted media executives to believe that sports can drive long-term subscriber growth.
Peacock reportedly paid an estimated $110 million to air Saturday’s Chiefs-Dolphins game, signifying a significant investment in exclusive streaming rights. With the Chiefs’ popularity and fan base, Peacock is banking on viewers outside of Kansas City and Miami being willing to pay to watch the game. Last year, the six wild-card games across major networks averaged 28.8 million viewers, and if Peacock can reach 20 million viewership, it would be considered a big win.
As the president of NBC Sports overseeing Peacock, Rick Cordella emphasizes the importance of sports in Peacock’s strategy. He believes that people will pay for the game and subsequently become exposed to the other content the platform offers. Signing up for Peacock can be done online or through the Peacock app on supported devices, with discounts available for students.
In addition to airing on NBC stations in the respective team’s cities, the Chiefs-Dolphins game will also be available on mobile devices via the NFL+ app. The game will feature a commercial-free fourth quarter and will be called by Mike Tirico as play-by-play, Jason Garrett as the analyst, Kaylee Hartung as the reporter, and Terry McAulay as the rules analyst.
Overall, the exclusive streaming of the Chiefs-Dolphins matchup on Peacock represents a new era in sports viewing, where paid subscription services are becoming the norm. The success of this experiment could have implications for future streaming deals and content distribution in the sports broadcasting industry.