Published: December 23, 2024 — The night before Christmas and all through the house, something was stirring but it wasn’t a mouse. Netflix was finalizing promotions with care, in advance of the NFL Christmas Day Live that soon would be here.

The doubleheader, featuring match-ups between the Kansas City Chiefs at the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the Baltimore Ravens at the Houston Texans, marks Netflix’s first-ever NFL broadcast. Produced by CBS Sports, the games will feature a slew of announcing talent on and off the field as well as music superstars Mariah Carey, who will open the show with her iconic hit holiday single “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” and Beyoncé, who will headline the Ravens-Texans halftime show.

Up to the stadium top, our inaugural blimp flew, to spread holiday cheer and assemble our gameday-watching crew.

The first-ever Netflix blimp flew over seven cities in the month leading up to Christmas Day, kicking off and wrapping up in Houston with stops in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Atlanta, Nashville and Dallas.

And outside the stadiums, there arose such a clatter, from our hot cocoa trucks boasting great gameday swagger.

Accompanied by the blimps, we deployed hot cocoa trucks on the ground to a variety of NFL, NBA, NHL and NCAAF games in Houston, Dallas and Atlanta so sports fans could snag hot chocolate, clear stadium bags and enter to win epic prizes, including tickets to the NFL Christmas Day Games and a year of free Netflix.

When what to my wondering eyes did appear, but my fave Netflix stars to make tune-in easy and clear.

In addition to special game-day correspondents like comedian Bert Kreischer and Nate Bargatze, we also enlisted beloved Netflix talent like Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz, from the upcoming film Back in Action, and Cobra Kai stars William Zabka and Ralph Macchio to promote the match-ups ahead of game day. (NFL players also had fun revealing their top Netflix picks.)

More rapid than eagles our advertising partners came. And we whistled, and shouted, and called them by name: “Now, Google Pixel! Now, Verizon! Now Fanduel and BMW!”

We assembled an impressive suite of top-tier partners for our NFL programming. FanDuel will be the exclusive pregame sportsbook betting partner with a sponsored in-show feature. This custom segment will include Netflix Christmas Gameday talent, offering analysis and predictions aligned to FanDuel’s wagering odds for the games. Verizon will be the Netflix Christmas kickoff sponsor as the official partner for the exciting pre-kick segment that will run before kickoff. Snickers will be the pre-game promo sponsor. Johnnie Walker, WhatsApp, Call of Duty and Duolingo will all run custom Squid Game spots during commercial breaks.

On Netflix, the games were promoted with care, in hopes that touchdowns and field goals soon would be there.

Netflix Christmas Gameday Live kicks off on December 25 with Chiefs vs. Steelers at 1pm ET/10am PT followed by Ravens vs. Texans at 4:30pm ET/1:30pm PT. Click here to set a reminder for the games.

Are you excited to watch the NFL on Netflix?