Netflix’s live sports strategy will focus on turning selected games and competitions into major cultural events, rather than building a broad schedule of regular fixtures, chief content officer Bela Bajaria has said.
Speaking from Melbourne, Australia, Bajaria said the streaming service was looking for moments that felt “buzzy, cultural, zeitgeist” and created a sense of appointment viewing and conversation around them.
Her comments came as Netflix held global rights to the first regular-season NFL game played in Australia. The San Francisco 49ers beat the Los Angeles Rams 27-7 in Melbourne.
Netflix’s live sports strategy
Netflix is showing five NFL games during the 2026-27 season. They include the Australia fixture, the first Thanksgiving Eve game, two matches on Christmas Day and a Week 18 contest guaranteed to carry significance for the play-off race or seeding.
Bajaria pointed to the service’s first NFL broadcast, which was played on Christmas Day and featured Beyoncé during the half-time show, as an example of how a sporting fixture could be developed into an event.
She also cited the World Baseball Classic in Japan, the Home Run Derby, Alex Honnold’s climb of Taipei 101 and a BTS concert in Seoul as examples of the kind of programming that could fit the strategy.
Asked whether NBC’s Sunday Night Football, the most-watched prime-time programme for 15 consecutive years, would qualify, Bajaria joked: “If I had a dollar for every time I’m asked that, that money would just pay for ‘Sunday Night Football,’ and I wouldn’t even have to take it out of the $20 billion content budget.”
The approach suggests Netflix is unlikely to seek a large package of routine NFL games in its current form. The company could, however, be interested in an international package if the league created one, Bajaria said.
There are nine international NFL games scheduled this year and 10 planned for next season. Netflix’s global audience, including US members who follow American football, means the company will continue to hold discussions about international rights, she said.
Netflix is also considering further football opportunities. Bajaria confirmed the company could bid for the men’s World Cup in 2030 and 2034, after securing rights to the women’s tournaments in the US and Canada in 2027 and 2031.
“Obviously it’s a beloved sport around the world, and we have the Women’s World Cup, so I’m really excited about that,” she said. “We have a great partnership and relationship with FIFA, so we’re definitely going to always have those conversations.”
The streaming service is also testing ways to carry live programming from other media companies. Bajaria described its partnership with France’s TF1 Group as an experiment, while noting that Netflix and NBCUniversal already work together on film licensing and live sports production.
She said Netflix would continue to focus primarily on films and television programmes, rejecting the idea that it needed to copy YouTube’s short-form video model as it expands in live content.
