Culture
Peacock's wild-card game likely just the start of the NFL's playoff streaming era
The only place a reverse happens in the NFL is on the field. The league rarely moves backward when it comes to increasing its media rights coffers. If you were to place a wager on whether Saturday’s first-ever exclusive, live-streamed NFL playoff game is going to be repeated in the future, you’d be wise to bet big on the same thing happening during the 2024 postseason.
Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s executive vice president of media distribution, nearly said as much during a conference call with reporters three days before the game.
“As it relates to the wild-card game exclusively, we’re excited to continue the conversation,” said Schroeder. “This is a deal for this year, but it’s an NFL playoff game. I expect there will be a lot of interest in it. We’re excited to continue the conversation with NBC with what we do this year and seeing where those opportunities are for next year.”
No matter politicians sending out social media posts, no matter current players with concerns, and no matter the totally legit fan complaints for having to pay extra for an NFL playoff game, the league as an entity has one objective — to continue as an ATM for its owners. It was a money grab for the present and the future, and in many ways, the viewership for the game is irrelevant to whether the NFL continues to sell playoff games to streamers.
Peacock paid $110 million to air the Kansas City Chiefs’ 26-7 win over the Miami Dolphins on Saturday night in the AFC wild-card round, an attempt to add to its current tally of 30 million subscribers. The strategy for Peacock, as it is for other streamers that air sports, is to use the exclusivity of a major live sporting event to drive mass audience aggregation. It is a strategy that has historically worked for linear entities, and Peacock is sticking with its strategy despite $2.8 billion in losses in 2023. (Peacock’s hope is $2.8 billion represents peak losses.)
But the game turned out to be a massive viewership success. Viewership across Peacock, NBC stations in Miami and Kansas City and on mobile with NFL+, according to Nielsen custom fast national data, was 23 million viewers. That is the most-streamed NFL game ever in the U.S. based on average audience. The Dolphins-Chiefs game peaked at an average of 24.6 million viewers in the second quarter, including out-of-home viewership. The 23 million viewership average tops last year’s least-watched playoff game (Los Angeles Chargers at Jacksonville Jaguars, which averaged 20.61 million viewers on NBC) by a couple of million viewers. (For broader context, last year’s six wild-card games across Fox, CBS, NBC and ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 averaged 28.8 million viewers.)
Daniel Cohen, the executive vice president of global media rights consulting at Octagon, told The Athletic that subscriber churn and piracy are the two biggest challenges facing subscription video-on-demand growth in the U.S. That’s one of the questions that will be answered in a couple of months: How many people signed up to watch the game, and then how many of those new subscribers canceled after the game? (The cheapest option to purchase the game was $5.99 for a one-month premium plan.) Peacock was atop the iPhone and iPad charts on Saturday night as far as downloaded apps.
NBC naturally pushed the Peacock offering throughout the fourth quarter of the Houston Texans’ blowout of the Cleveland Browns earlier Saturday, including showing Taylor Swift walking in the bowels of Arrowhead Stadium. The “Football Night In America” crew also hawked the Peacock game, and that group provided bonus coverage at the start of the game on NBC with Ahmed Fareed, Devin McCourty and Chris Simms providing play-by-play on a split screen of the game.
An average of 23 million people watched the Dolphins-Chiefs wild-card game Saturday night, which streamed exclusively on Peacock outside the Miami and Kansas City markets. (David Eulitt / Getty Images)
Rick Cordella, the president of NBC Sports, said before the game that the company’s two big goals were to have a great production and deliver a clean experience to the users across America. There were no widespread reports of major streaming issues, so that goes down as a win for Peacock. (Peacock can’t control so-called last-mile issues, which involve local cable and internet companies or personal devices.) How you processed the game probably depends on your thoughts of Mike Tirico and Jason Garrett and whether you thought the payment was worth it if you were new to Peacock. Tirico is always a pro. Garrett’s energy was miles better than Dungy last year, though there are plenty of better NFL analysts. If you were a neutral fan and not rooting for Miami or Kansas City, the game wasn’t very memorable.
Peacock’s first exclusive NFL game, which saw the Buffalo Bills defeat the Chargers on Dec. 23, averaged 7.3 million viewers and peaked at an average of 8.4 million viewers from 10:45-11 p.m. ET during the NFL’s first-ever commercial-free fourth quarter. The Chiefs-Dolphins playoff game also went commercial-free in the fourth quarter based on sponsorship from AWS, Geico and Hotels.com. As Anthony Crupi of Sportico wisely noted, “Comcast is more invested in the long-term growth of Peacock than the immediate adrenaline spike that comes with an extra $18 million to $20 million in commercial cash.”
NBC first started streaming “Sunday Night Football” on the internet in 2008, and they were the first NFL partner in the U.S. to stream the Super Bowl (in 2012). Peacock would be a natural fit for doing this again.
“We’ve been on Peacock for several years now, and we’re excited with the plan NBC came back with and came to us all the way last spring,” Schroeder said. “We’re excited with the continued growth that we’re seeing across our digital distribution, certainly with ‘Thursday Night Football’ on Amazon, where their weekly viewership numbers are approaching last year on television with Fox and NFL Network.”
Schroeder was careful to say that the NFL remains committed to broadcast television. That is true, though Saturday night did feel like a seismic moment, a line crossed.
“That still continues to be the broadest possible reach,” Schroeder said. “You can’t reach 190 million people throughout the course of the year without having very broad distribution of your content, and that’s always been a bedrock for us and I think a real differentiator for us versus other sports. Every one of our games is on broadcast television, at least in their market, and probably 90 percent of our games (are) on broadcast as their core platform. For us, it remains really important. We see the continued evolution in the media landscape, and we want to be where our fans are. We know they’re increasingly, especially younger fans, on different screens.”
Your potential dislike of this is understandable, but the NFL does not go backward. Bet big this happens again next January.
There was an unexpected hire from ESPN last week — Nick Kyrgios will be a guest commentator for ESPN’s coverage of the 2024 Australian Open. The 28-year-old Wimbledon finalist in 2022 is one of the most popular and polarizing figures in the sport. He missed all four majors in 2023 because of wrist, knee and foot injuries and said recently his playing career is close to the end.
How did the Australian player and the U.S. home of tennis get together? Mark Gross, the senior vice president, production and remote events for ESPN, said Stuart Duguid, who represents Kyrgios, reached out to ESPN to gauge their interest in his client working the Australian Open.
“The deal came together fairly quickly because of the interest from both sides,” Gross said. “The plan is to have Nick on the air in prime time East Coast time. We certainly believe Nick will be very good on the air, and we want to make sure the largest portion of our audience will see and hear him (instead of having him on the air in the overnight hours).”
Gross said Kyrgios will handle a mix of matches and studio work depending on the day and the schedule. For now, the deal is only for the Australian Open, but ESPN is certainly open to exploring things down the road. He and John McEnroe called the Stefanos Tsitsipas-Zizou Bergs match Sunday night for ESPN and early returns were he was excellent.
“For now, it’s just the Australian Open, but we’ll certainly be open to talking to Nick and Stuart about opportunities moving forward,” Gross said. “In fairness to Nick and tennis fans, we hope Nick gets on the court soon so we can cover his matches.”
GO DEEPER
Nick Kyrgios exclusive interview: ‘I feel more respected in the U.S. than Australia’
— Pretty cool note that Noah Eagle called the Texans-Browns game on NBC while his father, Ian Eagle, called the same game for Westwood One Audio.
— ESPN said “Sunday NFL Countdown” had its most-watched regular season since 2019 and its second-best since 2016, averaging 1.335 million viewers per show. Viewership was up 8 percent.
— Former U.S. national team star Ali Krieger joined CBS Sports’ soccer coverage as a studio analyst.
— ESPN’s full slate of college football bowls this season averaged 4.6 million viewers across 40 total games, up 5 percent year-over-year.
— The partnership between the NFL and ESPN could soon grow more intertwined with the league in advanced talks to acquire an equity stake in the sports network.
— Fun to see Fox NFL Sunday analyst Jimmy Johnson amp it up.
Some things I read over the past couple of weeks that were interesting to me (there are paywall here):
• Bryan Curtis of The Ringer examines the last two weeks at ESPN.
• An Iowa paperboy disappeared 41 years ago. His mother is still on the case. By Thomas Lake of CNN.
• It was the Patriot Way, until it wasn’t. By Seth Wickersham, Wright Thompson and Don Van Natta Jr. of ESPN.
• ESPN used fake names to secure Emmys for ‘College GameDay’ stars. By Katie Strang of The Athletic.
• The Whale Who Went AWOL. By Ferris Jabr for The New York Times Magazine.
• Great piece by Jeff Pearlman: V.J. Lovero and the bygone age of the sports photographer.
• A rising star at celebrity trials like O.J. Simpson’s. Then a quiet, mysterious death. By Harriet Ryan of the L.A. Times.
• A stroke took Charlie Manuel’s words away. Baseball is giving them back. By Matt Gelb of The Athletic.
• NBC Sports producer Annie Koeblitz and NFL writer Peter King produced a beautifully shot feature on Niners linebackers coach Johnny Holland, who is battling a rare form cancer.
• Perry High School Principal Dan Marburger, wounded in Jan. 4 shootings, passes away. By The Des Moines Register staff.
• Tom Shales, Pulitzer-winning TV critic of fine-tuned wit, dies at 79. By Adam Bernstein and Brian Murphy of The Washington Post.
• A filmmaker was producing a documentary series on the Iran hostage crisis. Then her father went missing overseas. By Lucy Sexton and Joe Sexton for The Atavist.
• China Failed to Sway Taiwan’s Election. What Happens Now? By Damien Cave of The New York Times.
• He spent his life building a $1 million stereo. The real cost was unfathomable. By Geoff Edgers of The Washington Post.
Episode 361 of the Sports Media Podcast features Karen Brodkin, the co-head of WME Sports and an EVP at its parent company, Endeavor, and Hillary Mandel, an executive vice president and head of media for the Americas for IMG, an Endeavor company. Brodkin and Mandel have worked as advisors on an endless amount of media deals, from individual team deals to league deals. They recently served as consultants for the NCAA for its $920 million, eight-year agreement with ESPN.
In this podcast, Brodkin and Mandel explain their jobs and the skill sets needed for it; the use of research in evaluating deal points; the current economic environment for sports media rights; why the NCAA ultimately opted not to separate the women’s basketball tournament in the deal away from its other championships; why women’s college sports is on the rise; the Pac-12 falling apart; Peacock’s playoff deal with the NFL and what it means for consumers heading forward and more.
You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and more.
GO DEEPER
What happens next for Pat McAfee and ESPN? Where things stand between the star and network
(Top photo of the Peacock sign on display Saturday at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City: Scott Winters / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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