Global streaming company Netflix has said it won\u2019t be making a play for the upcoming NRL broadcast rights.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Netflix confirmed to The Australian Financial Review<\/a> that the streamer would not bid for any of the rights, which could change hands from the 2028 season. This comes off the back of Brandon Riegg, Netflix\u2019s vice president of unscripted, documentary, and sports series stating that the streaming giant is focused on \u201cbuzzy and unmissable\u201d events rather than an entire season of a given sport.<\/p>\n Netflix first announced itself into the sporting broadcast world via the NFL, streaming only the Christmas Day games in 2024, 2025 and not the entire season. Now, the company streams WWE and boxing events globally every week.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can certainly look at it, but it\u2019s probably more of a volume play. We\u2019re not at the point where it makes sense for us. It runs a bit counter to the event size strategy we\u2019ve been following,\u201d Riegg said. \u201cAnytime those things come up, we certainly look at it, and sometimes the leagues are willing to create a package that makes the most sense for us.\u201d<\/p>\n With Netflix\u2019s focus on big, set-piece sporting occasions, it seems the only appealing section of the NRL calendar would be\u00a0the three-part State of Origin series. But, as Netflix has ruled itself out of rights discussions, we\u2019ll never know what that might look like.<\/p>\n Considering that\u00a0no local broadcaster would purchase the rights if it came without the series, it appears an Origin carve out for anyone would be highly improbable. Game three alone reached an enormous total TV national reach of 5,657,000<\/a>, with a national average audience of 3,904,000, a 9.3 per cent year-on-year increase.<\/p>\n Not only would local broadcasters reluctantly give up this spectacle but Australia\u2019s anti-siphoning laws effectively require State of Origin to be free to the public. As such, Netflix or any other paid streaming service would not have the rights exclusively.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to curate sporting events that feel like they drive real urgency\u2026 because what you\u2019re doing is you\u2019re picking that over Bridgerton or Stranger Things on a given night,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why Netflix opted into jumping in the ring with Jake Paul and Mike Tyson. The event that streamed in November of last year at one point had 65 million concurrent streams watching around the world, with the United States alone peaking at 38 million.<\/p>\n Outside of boxing and WWE the streaming giant holds the US rights to the next two FIFA Women\u2019s World Cups in 2027 and 2031. And in Japan, it is currently broadcasting the World Baseball Classic.<\/p>\n Viva Las Vegas\u00a0<\/p>\n The NRL officially commenced its 2026 season two weeks ago in Las Vegas. A record 45,719 fans packed into Allegiant Stadium (home of NFL\u2019s Las Vegas Raiders) as Leeds, Newcastle and Canterbury secured victories in the sport\u2019s third visit to Sin City. The launch was deemed a success as the matches were watched by 2.1 million viewers, an increase of 7 per cent on last year\u2019s event.<\/p>\n The NRL are locked in to play round one in Vegas until at least 2028\u2014the first year of the new rights. Peter V\u2019landys the chairman of the Australian Rugby League Commission (ARLC) has previously stated he wants the rights to be worth more than $4 billion over five years, which would make it bigger than the AFL\u2019s six-year $4.5 billion deal.<\/a><\/p>\n It is believed the formal broadcast negotiations have commenced considering the NRL revealed that this would be the case as soon as the Australian Kangaroos side has finished its Ashes tour in England. The Kangaroos stomped its authority on the series back in November, completing the three-nil clean sweep with a 30 to eight victory over the Poms.<\/p>\n The last deal was signed by Nine and Foxtel with the code back in 2020. This deal is reportedly believed to be worth $1.7 billion.<\/p>\n With the code in a much stronger position than it was back in the haze of a global pandemic, with a reported revenue of $845.6 million \u2014 an increase of $100.7 million from 2024, it is expected that the new rights deal will be significantly higher.<\/p>\n Join more than 30,000 advertising industry experts<\/p>\n Get all the latest advertising and media news direct to your inbox from B&T.<\/p>\n \t\tSubscribe\n\t <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Global streaming company Netflix has said it won\u2019t be making a play for the upcoming NRL broadcast rights.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,435,158,85],"class_list":["post-530027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-netflix","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}