Peacock, NBC's streaming service, will exclusively broadcast the Wild Card Round game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins next weekend. The game, scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. ET on Saturday at Arrowhead Stadium, will air only on NBC stations in Kansas City and Miami.
Anyone else who wants to watch the start of the defending champions' playoffs will have to pay a subscription fee for the game.
The Chiefs-Dolphins game, a rematch of a Week 9 contest won by Kansas City, will be the first playoff game in NFL history to air exclusively on a streaming network becomes.
NBC previously broadcast a game exclusively on Peacock on December 23rd in which the Buffalo Bills defeated the Los Angeles Chargers while 7.3 million viewers watched. The game peaked in the NFL's first commercial-free fourth quarter from 10:45 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. ET, averaging 8.4 million viewers.
Will the subscriber strategy work for NBC?
Peacock paid the NFL an estimated $110 million to air the first-ever exclusive, live-streamed NFL playoff game, and the league clearly made a conscious decision to broadcast one of the most popular teams based on viewership (the Chiefs) in that primetime Place windows. (NBC stations in the two competing team cities will also air the game, and it will be available on mobile devices with NFL+.) Will Chiefs and Dolphins fans outside of the home markets buy the game? Peacock is betting on that.
Last year's six Wild Card games on Fox, NBC, CBS and ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 averaged 28.8 million viewers. It's very unlikely that the Dolphins-Chiefs game on Peacock will reach that number, but if they break the 20 million viewer mark, I think Peacock officials and the NFL will consider it a huge victory. We'll see if you're watching. — Richard Deitsch, senior sports media writer
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