Netflix put up big numbers for its NFL Christmas Day games this year, but not as much as they’d promised.
According to Puck’s John Ourand, the streamer was forced to offer free make-good ads to several sponsors from that day during this past week’s broadcast of the Yankees-Giants MLB Opening Day game.
The make-good is nothing new. It’s a long-standing understanding between advertisers and broadcasters that if the ratings don’t reach the promised level, there will be compensation in the form of additional ad placement at a future event. However, as Ourand notes, Netflix is in a unique position on this front as it’s not as though they have a consistent stream of similar events each week. Whereas CBS or Fox can offer a make-good the following weekend on another NFL game, Netflix has to sacrifice coveted space during its next major event to keep last time’s advertisers happy.
While Netflix’s Lions-Vikings game netted 27.5 million viewers and the Cowboys-Commanders game drew 19.9 million, they failed to meet their advertiser guarantees in the 18-54 demo. Ourand’s sources claim they missed that mark by about 18 percent.
Again, it’s not a new situation for a broadcaster to find itself in. However, when your events are as few and far between as Netflix’s are (for now), you have to get those numbers right, or you’ll just find yourself in a perpetual make-good cycle that no amount of Bert Kreischer appearances can overcome. It also didn’t help that, as Ourand noted, the game was just the first of 162 for both teams and not nearly as impactful for advertisers as an NFL game.
“Perhaps the lesson for Netflix is that genuinely big events can’t be manufactured,” wrote Ourand. “Even if they manage to pack more stars in a stadium than the Milky Way, the only thing that advertisers really want to see is more viewers tuning in.”