By Phillip Swann
The TV Answer Man –@tvanswerman

The National Football League’s move to provide more exclusive game rights to streaming services continued yesterday with the league announcing that Peacock this season will host the first-ever exclusive live streamed NFL Playoff game.

The game will be a Wild Card playoff game in prime time on Saturday, January 13, 2024. The Peacock exclusive Wild Card game will immediately follow a late afternoon NFL Wild Card playoff game on NBC and Peacock (4:30 p.m. ET on Sat. Jan. 13).

“We are thrilled to partner with the NFL on this industry milestone, bringing to Peacock the first ever exclusively live streamed NFL Playoff game,” Pete Bevacqua, NBC Sports chairman, said in a statement. “As Peacock continues to grow, nothing says ‘must-have’ programming more than live NFL games. With the regular-season schedule revealed last week and today’s announcement, we can’t wait for the 2023 season to kick off.”

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“We are excited to work with a great partner in Peacock to present the first-ever exclusively live streamed NFL playoff game this upcoming season,” added Hans Schroeder, NFL’s executive vice president and chief operating officer of NFL Media. “Expanding the digital distribution of NFL content while maintaining wide reach for our games continues to be a key priority for the League, and bringing the excitement of an NFL playoff game exclusively to Peacock’s streaming platform is the next step in that strategy.”

The NFL has indeed expanded the digital distribution of ‘NFL content’ over the last 18 months. Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service is now the exclusive home of Thursday Night Football games; Peacock this season will host one exclusive regular season game (December 23 between the Buffalo Bills and Los Angeles Chargers); and ESPN+ will have another exclusive regular season game on October 1 from London between Jacksonville and Atlanta.

Plus, the NFL last December awarded Google the exclusive rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket after being carried exclusively by DIRECTV for 28 years.

The online-only games will be available on local stations in the markets where the teams play as well as the NFL+ mobile service. But some fans on social media yesterday expressed their disappointment that they will have to subscribe to multiple services to watch all the games, particularly a playoff contest.

“Greed over access. No value to fans. This is mostly to help the mediocre Peacock streaming service,” tweeted ‘Dean Lamb.’

“If anyone puts a Ravens playoff game on Peacock I’ll lose it,” added ‘JReynolds.’

“Wait, does this mean we will have to pay for Peacock to watch this playoff game!?? I don’t want anymore apps,” wrote ‘Dominique Clare.’

The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that Peacock would get the exclusive playoff game.

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— Phillip Swann
@tvanswerman