Peacock Will Solely Carry NFL Playoff Sport; First Time for Streaming Service

The NFL is taking one other large step into streaming by placing considered one of its playoff video games solely on a digital platform for the primary time.

The league and NBCUniversal introduced Monday that the Saturday evening recreation on Wild Card weekend shall be on Peacock.

The Peacock unique recreation on Jan. 13 would begin at 8:15 or 8:30 p.m. ET. The sport shall be broadcast on NBC stations within the markets of the 2 groups. It should even be accessible on cell gadgets via the NFL+ package deal. It is going to be preceded by a late afternoon playoff recreation on NBC and Peacock that can kick off at 4:30 p.m. ET.

“Increasing the digital distribution of NFL content material whereas sustaining vast attain for our video games continues to be a key precedence for the league, and bringing the thrill of an NFL playoff recreation solely to Peacock’s streaming platform is the following step in that technique,” mentioned Hans Schroeder, NFL government vice chairman and chief working officer of NFL Media.

The league has made forays into streaming video games for almost a decade, however has gone all in over the previous couple seasons. Amazon Prime Video turned the unique residence of “Thursday Evening Soccer” final season whereas ESPN has had one worldwide recreation per season on ESPN+ since 2021.

Beneath the NFL’s 11-year contract with NBCUniversal that started this season, Peacock has an unique regular-season recreation. That shall be on Dec. 23 when the Buffalo Payments face the Los Angeles Chargers. The Cincinnati Bengals vs. Pittsburgh Steelers matchup on NBC will precede that.

“We spent loads of time with the NFL and had productive conferences in regards to the correct positioning of that (Peacock) recreation,” NBC Sports activities Chairman Pete Bevacqua mentioned final week when the regular-season schedule was launched. “We expect that’s going to be an incredible mixture of utilizing the ability of NBC with that late-afternoon recreation and driving that viewers to Peacock for the regular-season unique recreation.”

NBC may have three video games in the course of the first weekend of the postseason, marking the primary time a community has had that many on a single playoff weekend.

NBC additionally has the primetime Sunday recreation on Jan. 14 whereas Fox and CBS may have the sooner contests. ESPN has the Monday evening recreation to shut the opening weekend on Jan. 15. This would be the third 12 months that the NFL has performed the wild-card video games over three days.

Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This materials is probably not revealed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.