2024: The Year Streamers Cracked Live Programming

For years, traditional cable had one trump card against the upstart streamers devouring their business: live programming. Not anymore.

While streamers have chipped away at linear TV’s live programming monopoly for a couple of years now, 2024 marked a turning point — the end of streaming’s era of experimentation with live programming and the start of its new era of unbridled ambition.

We Now Go Live…

Streaming’s big year in live programming started off with a bang… much to the chagrin of NFL fans, some of whom were forced to sign up for a $6-per-month Peacock subscription to catch last season’s AFC Wild Card game in January. The first-ever streaming-exclusive NFL playoff game drew 28 million viewers, according to Nielsen, and sparked “the single biggest subscriber acquisition moment ever measured,” according to industry analytics firm Antenna. For Peacock, it was just the start of a strong year: The streamer also nabbed a Week 1 (and ultra-rare Friday night) NFL game to start the season, and successfully integrated NBC’s broader coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics.

But that’s Peacock, an offshoot of a company well familiar with live event programming. This was also the year that Netflix, after achieving hypercritical scale with some 282 million global subscribers, emerged as the undisputed winner of the so-called streaming wars. With victory secured, Netflix made the leap into live programming:

• As with its inaugural live broadcast in 2023, the star-studded Netflix Cup golf tournament, Netflix pursued one-off live events in 2024, such as The Roast of Tom Brady, a limited series late night talk show hosted by John Mulaney, a hot dog eating contest, and a tennis match between Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz.
• More notably, it hosted a boxing match between former YouTuber Jake Paul and former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, which drew a peak of 65 million concurrent streams (and a boatload of technical issues), and two Christmas Day NFL games (which drew an unduplicated audience of 65 million). In two weeks, it will start weekly worldwide broadcasts of WWE’s Monday Night Raw.

“In 2012, I said we’re going to become HBO before HBO could become us,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Serandos told The New York Times in May. “What I should have said back then is, ‘We want to be HBO and CBS and BBC and all those different networks around the world that entertain people.’” Now it has the final puzzle piece.

Coming Attractions: Streamers will take on even more live programming in 2025. The NBA is moving to Amazon (which is already two years into an exclusive 10-year deal to broadcast the NFL’s Thursday Night Football), as well as NBC, which will stream some games on Peacock. Apple will continue its seven-year deal to broadcast the MLB’s Friday Night Baseball, which began in 2022. Disney swears ESPN will, eventually, be available as a stand-alone streaming product. If you haven’t done so already, there’s a cord near you that may need cutting.