Price Peacock is paying NFL to stream 1 wild card game is huge

Feb 1, 2022; Inglewood, CA, USA; The NFL shield logo is seen at midfield at SoFi Stadium. Super Bowl LVI between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals will be played on Feb. 13, 2022. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Peacock and the NFL announced on Monday some major news.

Peacock, which is the streaming service for NBCUniversal, will be streaming one NFL Wild Card playoff game this season. The game will be on Saturday night, January 13, 2024 at 8:00 PM ET. The addition of the streaming game for Peacock will give NBCUniversal a record three games to broadcast on NFL Wild Card Weekend.

But the big news is just how much NBCUniversal is paying to stream the game.

Ready for this one? The Wall Street Journal reported that the price is in the range of $110 million.

Got that? That’s $110 million. For one game. We’re not talking $110 million for a package over several years. That’s just to stream one game, only this season.

The NFL typically assigns playoff games to its broadcast partners when signing TV deals, but they kept one playoff game unattached with plans to sell it on a year-by-year basis. This year, NBCUniversal won the bidding while receiving competition from Amazon Prime.

The NFL apparently intends to have this playoff game be streaming-only.

This will be the second Peacock-exclusive game of the season. Peacock will also stream the Bills-Chargers game Dec. 23 in prime time, which is a Saturday night game.

That sound you just heard is the price of being a fan going up. Now fans need an Amazon subscription to catch “Thursday Night Football” and a Peacock subscription to catch the Week 16 Bills-Chargers game. The one nice thing is both games will be available on local NBC channels for those in the markets of the teams playing in the games.

Here is the full press release.

New from ⁦@NBCUniversal⁩ and@nfl345 ⁦@NFLMedia⁩ pic.twitter.com/iGLFta14MV

— Brian McCarthy (@NFLprguy) May 15, 2023