Netflix’s sports strategy has always been built entirely on what it calls “big events.” Until now.

Just four weeks after a fourth-quarter earnings call in which it called the economics of full-season rights in any sport “extremely challenging,” the dominant streamer is now publicly showing interest in pursuing a Sunday afternoon package with the NFL.

“I definitely want the Sunday [afternoon] games,” Netflix chief content officer Bela Bajaria said on The Town podcast developed by The Ringer and Puck. Bajaria was asked what package she would be interested in when NFL media rights became available.

The NFL’s current rights deals, including the Sunday afternoon agreements with CBS and Fox, expire after the 2033 season. The league, however, has an opt-out for most of its individual agreements after the 2029 season, provisions that it will very likely exercise—particularly as it continues to draw record-setting audiences. An opt-out in its ESPN deal follows after the 2030 season.

Those comments show a stark and rapid pivot from those of Bajaria’s boss, co-CEO Ted Sarandos, in January, when he told analysts that the company would continue to focus on big events such as its Christmas Day games with the NFL, WWE’s Raw, and the upcoming FIFA Women’s World Cup starting in 2027.

“If there was a path where we could actually make the economics work, for both us and the leagues, we would certainly explore [it],” Sarandos said. “But right now, we believe that the live events business is where we really want to be.”

A New Thinking

So what changed? The company continues to study both the viewership and advertising numbers from its sports programming and is seeing just how impactful they are. 

A Christmas Day NFL doubleheader averaged 24 million viewers, representing the NFL’s largest-ever streaming audience, and is a notable foundation of Netflix’s entire advertising business. Initial episodes of Raw on Netflix, meanwhile, show an audience steadily migrating from linear television and are regularly ranking among the company’s top-10 shows globally.

Each endeavor was the result of what Bajaria said on The Town podcast was Netflix’s “fluid and opportunistic” content budget. 

Netflix also is experiencing both the benefit of its soaring stock and the pressure to maintain that growth. Shares in the company have increased more than 18% just since early January, and by more than 80% in the last 12 months, reaching a series of new company highs of more than $1,050 each. 

While Netflix, of course, offers a wide range of content, the NFL remains by far the most popular programming in all of U.S. media, regardless of genre. As a result, that unrivaled power is making even companies such as Netflix rethink their business model.

Netflix later said that Bajaria’s comments were informal ones made in a lightning-round portion of the interview, and did not singularly suggest a reworked content strategy. It remains quite notable, though, that instead of repeating the prior sentiments of Sarandos, she eagerly envisioned a bigger role for Netflix with the NFL.

The upcoming U.S.-Canada final of the 4 Nations Face-Off is not the Super Bowl of hockey.  The runaway success of the upstart tournament, however, is prompting ticket demand that is now approaching the NFL’s title game. 

Thursday’s final in Boston of the NHL midseason event is sparking low-end, get-in pricing of nearly $1,000 per ticket on multiple resale marketplaces. That figure is easily the highest for any NHL event since last June’s Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final between the Panthers and Oilers. Prime lower-level seats at TD Garden, the site of the game, are routinely garnering more than $3,000 each. Minimum pricing for the game has also roughly quadrupled over the last 10 days as the U.S.-Canada matchup became more likely, and then confirmed.

Those hockey ticket figures are not far from some of the final resale pricing for the recent Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, which, due in part to a historic lodging crunch there, ultimately saw get-in costs fall below $2,000 per ticket and some lower-level seats drop below $4,000. The Super Bowl, however, was played in a facility with roughly four times the seating capacity as TD Garden’s hockey capacity of 17,850.

A prior game between the U.S. and Canada in the 4 Nations Face-Off drew an average of 4.4 million American viewers, the NHL’s largest audience outside of the Stanley Cup Final since 2019, and even greater viewership is expected Thursday. 

Powerful Mix

The event represents a potent combination of factors that have allowed the tournament to transcend any prior NHL All-Star Game, or even a retooled NBA All-Star Game this weekend.

The U.S.-Canada matchup on the ice, of course, revives many prior ones in the Olympics between the two countries—perhaps most notably the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver that featured an overtime golden goal for Canada from Penguins star Sidney Crosby. 

Current geopolitics, meanwhile, have sharply escalated the tension between the countries—a situation filtering its way back to sports. U.S. President Donald Trump has spoken repeatedly of making Canada the 51st American state—an idea sharply rebuked by many Canadians including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. 

That idea from Trump has sparked widespread boos of the U.S. national anthem by Canadians during the 4 Nations Face-Off games in Canada. Such boos have also been increasingly common in regular-season NHL games amid an additional tariff battle.

Logic does not always align with what the heart wants. Such is the dilemma for Duke freshman Cooper Flagg, who told The Athletic last week that he wants to return to Durham for another season despite being the projected No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft.

“Shit,” Flagg said. “I want to come back next year.”

The full report made it seem as though Flagg and his family know his time in Duke is likely up after this season. But the influx of NIL (name, image, and likeness) money in the NCAA has made the prospect of staying another year in college more enticing for amateurs. 

Last December, top high school recruit AJ Dybantsa reportedly received a $7 million deal to play at BYU. The first-year salary of 2024 No. 1 pick Zaccharie Risacher is around $12.5 million, but the delta between the NBA and NCAA could be justified by another year of fine-tuning in the amateurs and the opportunity to win a national championship.

However, the decision, particularly for top prospects like Flagg and Dybantsa, is not only about their rookie-scale contract. It’s also about their long-term deals, which can be exponentially larger than their rookie deals.

By staying another year in college, Flagg would delay his second NBA contract by a year. A rookie deal lasts four years, so if Flagg were to opt into the 2025 draft, he’d start his second contract by the 2029–2030 season. The rookie scale maximum can be worth 30% of a team’s salary cap, and assuming a 10% maximum cap increase (the 2024–2025 salary cap is $140.59 million), Flagg’s second contract could be worth as much as $398.5 million over five years—or nearly $80 million per year.

Even a conservative 4% average salary cap increase over the next four years would leave Flagg’s potential maximum contract at around $301 million starting in the 2029-2030 season, about $60 million per year.

Flagg isn’t assured a maximum contract following his first deal, though most recent top picks have received max deals, including Cade Cunningham, Anthony Edwards, and Zion Williamson. Even 2018 No. 1 pick DeAndre Ayton, who didn’t agree to a max extension, signed a multiyear deal worth $33 million annually.

It’s likely that Flagg will still receive bigger contracts throughout his career, as long he lives up to the hype. But delaying life-changing, guaranteed money by one year is hard to justify, especially considering injury risk.