The NFL and NBCUniversal announced Monday that streaming service Peacock will exclusively air an NFL Wild Card Playoff in prime time on Saturday, Jan. 13, 2024.
Per The Wall Street Journal, the NFL and NBC agreed to a one-year deal worth $110 million for Peacock to host the Wild Card game. It will immediately follow an NFL Wild Card Playoff game at 4:30 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock. The markets of the two teams will have the option to watch on local stations.
“We are thrilled to partner with the NFL on this industry milestone, bringing to Peacock the first ever exclusively live streamed NFL Playoff game,” said Pete Bevacqua, chairman, NBC Sports. “As Peacock continues to grow, nothing says ‘must-have’ programming more than live NFL games. With the regular-season schedule revealed last week and today’s announcement, we can’t wait for the 2023 season to kick off.”
Hans Schroeder, NFL executive vice president and chief operating officer of NFL Media, expressed his excitement for the landmark deal.
“We are excited to work with a great partner in Peacock to present the first-ever exclusively live streamed NFL playoff game this upcoming season,” Schroeder said. “Expanding the digital distribution of NFL content while maintaining wide reach for our games continues to be a key priority for the League and bringing the excitement of an NFL playoff game exclusively to Peacock‘s streaming platform is the next step in that strategy.”
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Peacock will be the home to the Week 16 regular season matchup between the Buffalo Bills and Los Angeles Chargers. The AFC tilt, featuring two of the game’s best quarterbacks in Josh Allen and Justin Herbert, will take place on Saturday, Dec. 23, at 8 p.m. ET.
“We spent a lot of time with the NFL … Had productive meetings about the proper positioning of that [Peacock] game,” NBC Sports chairman Pete Bevacqua said last week when the regular season schedule was released, via ESPN. “We think that’s going to be a great combination of using the power of NBC with that late-afternoon game… Driving that audience to Peacock for the regular-season exclusive game.”
Peacock has seen tremendous growth since coming to the market. In quarter two of 2021, the streaming service had 4 million subscribers. That number has since grown to 22 million for quarter one of 2023.
