Back in 1993, Fox paid $1.58 billion to air NFC football games for the next four years. It was a staggering deal that helped solidify the NFL’s cultural dominance, and it changed the very nature of sports and television. Thirty-one years later, on Christmas Day a couple of weeks ago, Netflix showed its first-ever NFL games, two very dull blowouts. It paid $150 million for the right to stream them exclusively. Yes, we’re at the point where it costs $150 million to air two NFL games. The importance of these games to both the streaming giant and the league was clear from the seemingly infinite number of analysts and entertainers Netflix hired to cover them, including employees of competing networks (CBS’s Nate Burleson, ESPN’s Mina Kimes, Fox’s Greg Olson, and NFL Network’s Scott Hanson). This gave the proceedings the flouting-traditional-corporate-licensing feel of seeing Donald Duck and Daffy Duck play piano together in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Announcing our on-air talent for the NFL Christmas Gameday Live on Netflix! #NFLonNetflix pic.twitter.com/i1TA5pwuNA

Netflix’s broadcast was visually unappealing — as Defector’s David Roth put it, Netflix made “live sports look and feel exactly as uncanny and washed out as everything else on Netflix does” — but it avoided most of the bugs that plagued the Jake Paul–Mike Tyson fight in November. It was also a clear smash ratings hit, so it will surely not be the last Netflix-NFL experiment moving forward. Which means if you are an NFL fan and you want access to every game (as most NFL fans do), you better have Netflix. Also: You better have Amazon Prime, which saw a 13 percent ratings uptick in its second year showing NFL games and will exclusively air this weekend’s playoff game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens. You’ll also need Peacock, which last year paid $110 million to air a playoff game exclusively. And then there’s ESPN , which aired four Monday Night Football games this year, none of which were available on........

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