The Athletic has live coverage of Chiefs vs Dolphins in the AFC wild card matchup.
NFL fans trying to watch this weekend’s wild-card matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins will hit a paywall. While local NBC stations in Kansas City and Miami will air the game, viewers outside those areas will be required to pay a subscription fee to catch Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce against Tua Tagovailoa and Tyreek Hill on the NBC streaming service Peacock or the NFL+ app.
The game — scheduled for 8 p.m. ET on Saturday at Arrowhead Stadium — is the first playoff matchup in league history to air exclusively on a streaming network.
Fans, pundits and even Chiefs defensive end Charles Omenihu have been critical of the move, but it likely won’t be the last time the NFL and NBC turn to a subscriber strategy if enough viewers tune in.
So what is Peacock and how can you catch the action? Here’s what to know.
What is Peacock?
Peacock is NBC’s video streaming service delivered to viewers by the internet instead of broadcast, cable or satellite. The service — which launched in 2020 — houses live sports, including content from the previously shuttered NBC Sports Network cable channel, as well as movies and TV series.
Peacock offers a “Premium” subscription that includes live sports for $5.99 a month and a no-ad “Premium Plus” tier for $11.99 a month.
It’s supported on various web browsers as well as on Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Apple TV, Roku, Vizio, Cox, Spectrum, Xfinity, PlayStation and Xbox, among other platforms and devices.
What sports does Peacock stream?
In addition to NFL games, Peacock’s sports stock includes the Premier League, Olympics, WWE, Big Ten football/men’s and women’s basketball, golf, and motorsports, among others.
Content from NBCSN’s NBC Sports Gold Premier League Pass also transitioned to the platform and includes figure skating, rugby and cycling.
How many people subscribe to Peacock?
Peacock has 30 million subscribers, with subscriptions up 75 percent over last year, per Comcast.
What is Peacock doing with an NFL wild-card game?
Although Saturday’s competition marks the NFL’s first playoff game to be exclusively streamed, it’s not the first time the league has tried something like this. Peacock exclusively broadcast a Buffalo Bills–Los Angeles Chargers regular-season game on Dec. 23. That game averaged 7.3 million viewers, peaking at an average of 8.4 million viewers in the 10:45-11 p.m. ET window during the league’s first commercial-free fourth quarter.
Per The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch, Amazon Prime’s “Thursday Night Football” broadcast averaged 11.86 million viewers last year, which was up 24 percent from 2021 (9.58 million). As Deitsch notes, “The belief from media executives remains that sports can lead to long-term subscriber growth.”
Peacock paid the NFL an estimated $110 million to air Saturday’s game, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal in May and confirmed by The Athletic.
Why is the Chiefs game on Peacock?
It’s likely no coincidence that the Chiefs — one of the league’s most popular teams, bolstered by Taylor Swift’s fandom — are slated in this prime-time window. Peacock is counting on viewers outside Kansas City and Miami pulling out their wallets to watch.
Per Deitsch, the six wild-card games across Fox, NBC, CBS and ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 last year averaged 28.8 million viewers. He wrote: “The Dolphins-Chiefs game on Peacock is very unlikely to pull that kind of number but if they top the 20 million viewership mark, I think Peacock officials and the NFL will consider it a big win.”
Speaking about the strategy, Rick Cordella — the president of NBC Sports who oversees sports on Peacock — said: “Sports is a big part of our overall strategy at Peacock, and sports is not substitutable.”
“We know that people will come for the game and are willing to pay a subscription price for the game,” he continued. “Sports has sort of been the catalyst to get people in the door to Peacock and then exposed to all the other great content that we offer. It’s a continuance of that existing plan we’ve had for three years. We’re incredibly excited about what the audience numbers may be and what we can do with it.”
How to sign up for Peacock
Fans can sign up for Peacock online or by downloading the Peacock app on their supported device. Students get a discount on Peacock Premium ($1.99 per month for 12 months).
What else to know
In addition to Saturday’s Chiefs-Dolphins game being aired on NBC stations in the teams’ cities, it will also be available on mobile devices with NFL+.
Mike Tirico (play-by-play), Jason Garrett (analyst), Kaylee Hartung (reporter) and Terry McAulay (rules analyst) will call the game. It will feature a commercial-free fourth quarter.
Required reading
(Photo: Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP via Getty Images)
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