NBC’s Peacock streaming service will exclusively air the Bills-Chargers NFL game in Week 16. It will also be exclusively airing one of the league’s playoff games in January.
Per the Wall Street Journal, NBC and the NFL have agreed to a one-year deal to exclusively air a Wild Card playoff game in January. The WSJ reported the value of the deal at $110 million.
The NFL officially announced the deal on Monday.
NBC’s release after the NFL schedule release last week noted that the company would present two Wild Card games and one Divisional game “on NBC and Peacock.”
NBC Sports will present three postseason games on NBC and Peacock – with two Wild Card Playoff games and one Divisional Playoff game.
In the markets participating, the game will also air on the local NBC affiliates.
Peacock also streams NBC’s NFL schedule, though a subscription isn’t necessary to watch games. It will be for this game.
The WSJ reports that the game will air in the Saturday primetime window. This past season, that game was the Chargers-Jaguars matchup. Al Michaels and Tony Dungy called the game on NBC, and received plenty of criticism for their work.
The NFL’s release notes that NBC will air *three* Wild Card games, with this game joining a Saturday afternoon game and a Sunday primetime game. ESPN will air the Monday Wild Card game, leaving Fox and CBS with one game apiece.
Ultimately, putting any games exclusively behind a streaming paywall generates a lot of negative feedback. Putting an NFL playoff game behind a streaming paywall is going to get a lot of blowback, even if the game is still available on broadcast TV locally.
$110 million will soothe many of those wounds for the NFL, but that doesn’t help the fans at home, likely seething about having to smash their way through another paywall to watch a playoff game.
