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The Netflix-CBS Arranged Marriage

After being rebuffed by numerous TV networks to produce their hard-won pair of Christmas Day NFL games, Netflix finally found a dance partner in CBS. Of course, there were several key concessions…

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Netflix is slowly but surely priming itself to become a player in live sports, taking its time progressing from sports-adjacent content to event sports. Photo: Brett Carlsen/Getty Images
John Ourand
August 13, 2024

Back in May, days after Netflix picked up the rights to carry two NFL games on Christmas Day, the streamer’s top production executives began reaching out to network suits at CBS, Fox, NBC, and ESPN for a little help. And, in many ways, these phone calls represented the precarious and unbelievably fraught inflection point upon which the sports media industry now finds itself balancing.