After years of maintaining a cautious distance from the high-stakes, volatile world of live broadcasting, Netflix is making its definitive and most aggressive push into live sport to date. What began as a series of selective, exploratory experiments has rapidly evolved into a substantial and growing portfolio of major global events, signaling a profound directional shift for a platform that was once deeply ambivalent about the financial viability of expensive sports rights.
The global streaming giant now routinely broadcasts five National Football League (NFL) games per season, a notable expansion from just two games the previous year. Looking ahead to December, the platform is preparing to host what is widely anticipated to be the most-hyped heavyweight boxing contest in a generation, featuring a long-awaited clash between British former champions Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium.
This steady accumulation of marquee matchups confirms a broader strategic evolution for a service that previously relied almost exclusively on pre-recorded entertainment and on-demand series. Yet, these high-profile set-pieces represent only the beginning. Netflix is steadily transitioning from isolated tentpole broadcasts to longer, structurally complex, and multi-year broadcast projects that threaten to reshape the traditional television landscape.
This evolution was underscored this week by the announcement of a comprehensive, landmark rights deal for the 2030 Fifa World Cup in Spain, securing the platform a front-row seat to soccer’s signature men’s tournament four years from now. Before that milestone arrives, however, Netflix will embark on the most ambitious broadcast undertaking in its history: serving as the exclusive home of Fifa Women’s World Cup coverage in the United States and Canada for the 2027 and 2031 tournaments.
The geographic footprint of these upcoming tournaments carries considerable regional relevance for the platform’s core subscriber base. The 2027 competition is scheduled to be held in Brazil, while the 2031 edition will span across the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Jamaica, providing prime viewing windows for North American audiences.
To execute these monumental broadcasts, Netflix named IMG as its official production partner for both editions earlier this month. Speaking at the sports industry conference Leaders Week London at Stamford Bridge in the wake of that announcement, IMG president Adam Kelly and Brandon Riegg, vice president of nonfiction series and sport at Netflix, discussed the grand scope of the project and its profound implications for the next phase of the streaming era.
"This is our first foray, obviously, into football, and it’s a massive crown jewel event," Riegg told attendees. "And I think first and foremost, we want to execute in a way that pleases the fans who show up to watch."
Streaming the Women’s World Cup
The decision to bid for the tournament was heavily influenced by the encouraging early performance of live sports experiments on Netflix, combined with the company’s existing, successful documentary relationship with Fifa. When the live rights to the tournament officially went to market in 2024, Riegg noted that "there wasn’t much of a debate" internally as to whether the company, increasingly pivoting into the live event business, should aggressively pursue the property.
"Really, the Olympics and the World Cup, I would argue, are the two biggest global events," Riegg said. "And so we threw our hat in the ring."
Riegg acknowledged the added strategic appeal of back-to-back competitions hosted in the Americas, noting that the time zones offer viewing schedules that are "a little bit more accessible for the US." Nevertheless, he emphasized that the broader sports acquisition strategy remains fluid and opportunistic. "You know, I think the thing with sport is you don’t know when the next opportunity will come up, so you sort of have to be open-minded and opportunistic."
Once the rights were secured, Netflix required a production partner with a vision capable of satisfying discerning soccer fans while simultaneously invigorating corporate and broadcast partners. According to Riegg, that shortlist was exceptionally brief. "It’s not a very long list of people that can do that, and so really, IMG was at the top of the list, and we spoke to them pretty early on."
For IMG, the major assignment arrives during a transitional period for the company. Kelly revealed that he had been "desperate to talk about" the new partnership "for over a year." The production giant is now a key component of TKO Holdings, the parent company of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and WWE, whose flagship Monday Night Raw series is also broadcast globally on Netflix.
While the Premier League’s recent decision to take its production in-house dealt a blow to traditional external agencies, IMG has maintained a heavy and influential presence in soccer production. The company works closely with major organizations such as Major League Soccer (MLS), the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), and the Women’s Super League (WSL).
Looking ahead to the upcoming World Cup partnership, Kelly expressed confidence that Netflix will prove to be "incredibly strong for women’s sport and women’s football."
"We talk often about trust," Kelly explained. "And one of the huge strengths that Netflix has is the trust of 320-plus million globally, who naturally, when they switch on the device—they hear the ‘tud-um!’—they feel the trust that there is going to be great content for them to watch. And [Netflix has] earned the right through that trust to push content towards them that they might otherwise not have seen."
Kelly added that he believes the platform’s involvement will drive unprecedented audiences and structural growth for the tournament, ultimately benefiting the entire global soccer ecosystem and the wider sports industry.
Netflix and IMG are no strangers to collaboration in the live sports arena. Together, they previously injected novel technology into the Six Kings Slam men’s tennis tournament in Saudi Arabia, introducing a fresh look and feel designed to bring viewers closer to the heart of the action.
However, innovation merely for the sake of technology is strictly avoided. Kelly remains cautious of "trying to overengineer" the on-screen product, placing his primary emphasis on finding ways to clearly communicate the underlying narrative, human storytelling, intense passion, and raw athletic action to improve the overall fan experience.
A Broader Offer
Live sport is rapidly emerging as a critical commercial and strategic differentiator for the major digital media players, mirroring the role it has played for conventional linear broadcasters for decades.
"Between the various streaming services, the linear channels, social media and what not, the competition for people’s time and attention has never been greater," Riegg said. "Sports, I think, is proving that it’s one of the few categories of programming that can still aggregate a meaningful audience."
This shift is driven by stark commercial imperatives. Even market-leading platforms like Netflix have faced intense battles for subscriber growth since the peak of the subscription streaming boom in the early 2020s. Days after Riegg’s appearance at Leaders Week, the company announced 1,000 workforce redundancies, marking its steepest internal cuts since 2022.
Despite these economic pressures, "eventized" live broadcasts complement Netflix’s existing entertainment programming portfolio both creatively and strategically. The platform originally built its burgeoning sports footprint through critically acclaimed docuseries, such as the pandemic-era basketball smash The Last Dance, and the pioneering Formula 1 documentary series Drive to Survive.
During the men’s Fifa World Cup, Netflix successfully captured a share of the wider football conversation through a strategic partnership with UK-based podcast studio Goalhanger, distributing the popular Gary Lineker-fronted show The Rest is Football. That collaborative partnership has since extended directly into the domestic Premier League season.
By carefully surrounding major live events with complementary documentary features, films, and podcasts, Riegg noted that Netflix makes it seamless for both casual observers and diehard fans "to navigate the entire universe of a given subject—in this case, sport."
This density of varied programming unlocks another powerful dynamic within the platform. A highly personalized user experience has long served as the company’s primary competitive advantage, and Riegg believes this algorithm-driven personalization has a transformative effect on content discovery.
"Your Netflix is different than my Netflix," he said, contrasting it with his past experience in linear television where programming decisions relied heavily on gut instinct or historical performance data.
The proprietary library of data accumulated by Netflix frequently reveals counterintuitive viewing habits. For instance, Riegg pointed out that a surprisingly high volume of subscribers who avidly watch the period drama Bridgerton also faithfully follow Drive to Survive. Similarly, UK audiences who initially subscribed to watch gritty dramas like Peaky Blinders frequently transition directly into high-concept Korean thrillers like Squid Game.
When it comes to promoting live events, the platform’s algorithmic recommendation engine is now systematically supplemented by robust early promotion and marketing campaigns—an operational discipline Riegg insists Netflix has steadily refined over time.
Streaming and Sport’s Multiplatform Future
For Kelly, the broader streaming sector’s aggressive pivot toward live sports rights represents a profound validation of sport’s enduring commercial viability within radically altered media environments.
"The power of sport, the superpower of sport, is that live engagement—the scarcity factor and this demand to make and schedule time," he said. "I think that puts a super-premium on people’s commitment to engage with sport, and that commitment is highly valuable, particularly in today’s world."
The inherent authenticity and honesty of live sport, Kelly argued, become even more compelling when contrasted against an era of AI-generated, infinite digital content. At the same time, rights holders must fully appreciate the importance of maintaining an "always-on" presence.
"The surrounding content is increasingly important," he added. "As well as creating that funnel, it’s creating the opportunity for non-core fans that have been ready and willing to make that commitment to get access and to be intrigued and to choose to sample and engage with sport in another way."
IMG has heavily invested in proving that the deep connectivity between audiences and engagement across television and digital platforms yields superior outcomes for commercial brands. This integration delivers strong results for media partners, encouraging them to reinvest capital into content creation to support enhanced audience engagement and data analysis online.
"And that," Kelly continued, "is a positive feedback loop."
Looking ahead, Kelly expects the global content distribution contest to intensify further, noting he "wouldn’t be surprised" to see major artificial intelligence enterprises or satellite internet providers like Starlink enter the bidding space. All of these developments demand a fundamental shift in strategic thinking for sports rights holders.
Rather than relying on the traditional "walled garden" of exclusive broadcasting rights that defined the previous era of television, Kelly suggests embracing a multi-touchpoint approach focused on growing and monetizing fanbases through athletes, dedicated fan channels, and a hybrid mix of linear and digital platforms.
For its part, Netflix is steadily carving out a permanent, influential home within that evolving sports ecosystem.
"We’re a general entertainment platform," Riegg said. "If you’re looking to serve your existing fanbase, there are a lot of great options to do that. If you’re looking to reach people that are either lapsed or never-fans or casual fans, we certainly believe that we’re in a great position to help provide that growth, and that comes a few ways."
With the foundational technical infrastructure required to deliver reliable live broadcasts now firmly established, Riegg anticipates that live sport—and its unmatched capacity to satisfy an inherent human desire for unpredictability and clear competitive stakes—will occupy an increasingly prominent place in the Netflix programming mix.
"Sport transcends language and geography and culture," he concluded, "and I think storytelling is the same. And so, really, it’s just saying, ‘Who are the best storytellers for us to work with?’ And then going out and saying, ‘These are the stories that we think are the most interesting ones to tell.’ It is literally as simple as that."
