The TV rights of Serie A are currently valid 900 million euros per season. An investment of the highest level, but decidedly reduced (in proportion to the number of races) compared to what he would have spent Netflix to buy the exclusive right to the two American football games of the NFL, the top American football league in the USA, which will also be broadcast live in Italy on Christmas Day.
We are talking about around 75 million dollars each. The games are those between Kansas City Chiefs and Pittsburgh Steelers (start at 7pm Italian time) and between Houston Texans and Baltimore Ravens (start at 10.30pm Italian time) and are part of a package that Netflix has acquired for a three-year period, taking the Christmas Gamedaywhich for football is a bit like Boxing Day for Premier League.
Football is just another important step by the streaming giant in the world of sport. In mid-November the platform broadcast the boxing match between Mike Tyson e Jake Paul and starting in January 2025 it will air WWE wrestling matches, initially in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Latin America and later in other countries.
In short, Netflix is also developing a major focus on this sector, after other competitors have already entered “at full speed”. Amazon Prime Video ha the Champions League, su Apple TV Plus if you see the MLS, Disney Plus has just added (for now only in the United States) an ESPN section which includes some live sports and the programs of the popular television channel.
And the next step? Although there is no official confirmation, according to The 19th Century Netflix could soon enter the race for the TV rights of Serie A. Even from an economic point of view, it is not an unlikely or impracticable operation: to date, the rights are divided between DAZN (which broadcasts all the matches) and Sky (three co-exclusive matches in turn) and it cannot be ruled out that at the end of the 2028/2029 season, when they expire, Netflix may invest 200 million to take the part that today belongs to Sky.
This would be a small slice of a budget that last year saw a turnover of almost 34 billion dollars (and a profit of around 5.5 billion) and proportionately less than what the NFL cost Netflix, although it should be underlined that the agreement for football is global, while that for Serie A would be limited to our territory.
Netflix should clearly also evaluate the possible return on investment, and equip itself with a structure capable of best supporting many connections at the same time, all together to watch a live event. Precisely the Tyson fight, which would have been recorded 60-80 million hits at the same time with numerous reports of disservices, it has shown that the company can and must definitely strengthen itself in order to be better competitive when it comes to live events. NFL games will be another important test.
