NFL Wild Card game to be streamed exclusively on a digital platform for the FIRST time – with Peacock chosen for January showdown
Peacock to Host Saturday Night Game on NFL Wild Card Weekend
The league has been making inroads into streaming games for nearly a decade
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The NFL is taking another big step in streaming by putting one of its playoff games exclusively on a digital platform for the first time.
The league and NBCUniversal announced Monday that Saturday Night’s Wild Card Weekend game will take place on Peacock.
The exclusive Peacock game on January 13 would start at 8:15 or 8:30 p.m. ET. The game will air on NBC stations in both teams’ markets.
It will also be available on mobile devices through the NFL+ package. It will be preceded by a late afternoon playoff game on NBC and Peacock that kicks off at 4:30 p.m. ET.
“Expanding digital distribution of NFL content while maintaining broad reach for our games continues to be a key priority for the league, and bringing the excitement of an NFL playoff game exclusively to the platform of Peacock streaming is the next step in that strategy,” said Hans Schroeder, NFL Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of NFL Media.
The NFL Wild Card game in January will be broadcast exclusively on a digital platform for the first time
The exclusive Peacock game on January 13 would start at 8:15 p.m. or 8:30 p.m. ET
The league has been making inroads into streaming games for nearly a decade, but has gone all out in the past two seasons.
Amazon Prime Video became the exclusive home of ‘Thursday Night Football’ last season while ESPN has had one international game per season on ESPN+ since 2021.
As part of the NFL’s 11-year contract with NBCUniversal that started this season, Peacock has an exclusive regular season game. It will be December 23 when the Buffalo Bills take on the Los Angeles Chargers. The Cincinnati Bengals game against the Pittsburgh Steelers on NBC will precede that.
“We’ve spent a lot of time with the NFL and had productive meetings about positioning this (Peacock) game right,” NBC Sports President Pete Bevacqua said last week when releasing the schedule for the NFL. regular season.
The San Francisco 49ers faced the Seattle Seahawks in the January Wild Card weekend last season
“We think it’s going to be a great combination of harnessing the power of NBC with that late afternoon game and driving that audience to Peacock for the exclusive regular season game.”
NBC will have three games in the first weekend of the playoffs, marking the first time a network has had so many in a single playoff weekend.
NBC also has the prime-time Sunday game on Jan. 14 while Fox and CBS will have the previous contests.
ESPN has the Monday night game to wrap up opening weekend on January 15. This will be the third year the NFL has played three-day wild cards.