From Week 1 to Super Bowl week, Netflix’s new NFL footprint takes shape through 2029

Netflix has expanded its inventory of NFL games and will have a season-long presence with the league under a new deal announced Wednesday.

The streaming service will have five regular-season games as well as the NFL Honors through 2029. It had been carrying two games on Christmas Day since 2024. The announcement was made during its upfront presentation to advertisers.

Netflix will air a Week 1 game, one on Thanksgiving Eve, two on Christmas Day and a 1 p.m. ET contest on the Saturday of the final week of the regular season.

Two of the matchups — both featuring the Lost Angeles Rams — were made official on Wednesday. Netflix will carry the Week 1 game between the Rams and San Francisco 49ers in Melbourne, Australia. The Rams will then host the Green Bay Packers in the first Thanksgiving Eve contest on Nov. 25.

Both games will be aired in primetime in the United States at 8:35 p.m. ET. The Week 1 game will be on Sept. 10 in the U.S. Melbourne is 14 hours ahead of New York and 17 hours ahead of Los Angeles and San Francisco, so it will kick off at 10:35 a.m. on Sept. 11 in Australia.

The Australia matchup between NFC West rivals is one of nine international games the NFL will play this upcoming season. The league released its complete international slate Wednesday morning.

“We’ve seen how many fans are already on Netflix, so we thought it was a tremendous opportunity to deepen the partnership, expand the reach of those games, and to do so around tentpole events at the beginning and end of the year with big holidays in the middle, then have them extend into honors and do what Netflix has shown they do so well, which is make big events even bigger,” said Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s executive vice president of media distribution.

Two games — Thanksgiving Eve and Week 18 — are from the four the league got back after ESPN bought NFL Network. The Week 1 game was on YouTube last season.

The NFL Honors started during the 2012 Super Bowl in Indianapolis as a way for the league to announce all of its award winners in one show. It started airing the night before the Super Bowl but moved to the Thursday of Super Bowl week in 2022. It had been carried by the network airing the Super Bowl, but will now get a worldwide audience with the move.

The NFL Honors include the Associated Press awards for Most Valuable Player, Offensive and Defensive Players of the Year, Offensive and Defensive Rookie of the Year, Coach of the Year, Assistant Coach of the Year and Comeback Player of the Year.

The full schedule, including the Christmas Day matchups, will be released Thursday evening. The Week 18 Saturday games, which also include 4:30 and 8:15 p.m. ET matchups on ESPN/ABC, are not announced until six days out because the league prioritizes games with playoff implications in those spots.

The regular-season schedule was finalized Tuesday morning.

Netflix also announced the third season of the documentary series Quarterback will debut on July 14. It will feature Washington’s Jayden Daniels, Tampa Bay’s Baker Mayfield, Tennessee’s Cam Ward, the top pick in the 2025 draft, and Joe Flacco, who began the season with Cleveland before being traded to Cincinnati.

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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL