Jake Paul fighting Mike Tyson, the NFL on Christmas Day and a Super Bowl-level Beyoncé performance turned out to be great for Netflix’s business.The streaming juggernaut reported record new subscriber sign-ups in the last quarter of 2024 — nearly 19 million — bringing the total number of subscribers above 300 million. (As of Wednesday morning, Netflix stock is surging.)AdvertisementThe company was quick to point to the success of its late-year sports programming, including the Paul-Tyson boxing match and its NFL double-header on Christmas, which included a Beyoncé-fronted halftime show that Netflix also packaged on its own, ultimately drawing more viewers than the football games.Market research firm Antenna estimated that Netflix drove more than 650,000 new subscribers in the days surrounding the NFL games. According to Antenna, the Paul-Tyson fight drove more than 1.4 million subscription sign-ups.The company laid out its sports programming strategy in its letter to shareholders released Tuesday:“We’re not focusing on acquiring rights to large regular season sports packages. Rather, our live strategy is all about delivering can’t-miss, special event programming,” the company said.That positions Netflix as a sort of an “anti-ESPN.”By design and necessity, ESPN spends its rights budget on amassing a huge volume of regular-season sports packages. The network’s currency is live games, so it spends prolifically on that programming. (This tonnage of live games will become even more important to ESPN as it launches its own direct-to-consumer sports platform — currently code-named “Flagship” — later this year.) On top of that, ESPN/ABC may have the most marquee events in the history of sports media with upcoming Super Bowls, The NBA Finals, the College Football Championship and the Stanley Cup Final, among others.The luxurious position Netflix finds itself in is evident in its acquisition strategy. It doesn’t need all of the live sports — it just needs enough “big, memorable” (in its own words) live sports to keep its audience engaged.With a market cap north of $370 billion — and growing, if Wednesday’s stock-price surge off Tuesday’s quarterly report is any indication — along with its massive global audience, Netflix can both pick and choose what it decides is “can’t-miss” and presumably outspend anyone in the market.AdvertisementThat is a big reason the Christmas Day football experiment was so important — both for Netflix and the NFL.Netflix needed to test whether fans would jump from traditional NFL broadcasting platforms to stream games on Netflix, surely understanding that Amazon Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football had proved the concept.Netflix went all out, hiring dozens of on-air personalities from other networks and, of course, paying Beyoncé to deliver a halftime show that would not have looked out of place at a Super Bowl. The payoff included being the most-watched NFL game ever on a streaming platform.Netflix has the rights to do Christmas Day games again in 2025 — given Dec. 25 is a Thursday, they will be airing on the same day as one of Amazon Prime Video’s games.The NFL, naturally, has to be thrilled: They get a deep-pocketed new entrant that can pay top dollar for rights fees, get the product in front of a global audience of a couple hundred million people and put on a broadcast that looks and feels similar to the one fans are used to.Netflix is a natural (top) bidder for a new package of NFL games, whether that is a new “18th game,” an international package or something brand-new (like the NFL on Christmas Day, which used to be the province of the NBA).Now layer in WWE. Netflix poached WWE’s Monday night live show and launched weekly shows earlier this month. While that would seem to fit the description of “large regular season sports package” it claimed to be side-stepping, Monday night WWE’s road show feels more like a “special event” than “multiple games a week.”What qualifies as a sports-related “special event?” And also happens to be one of the few premium live-sports packages that are available right now?UFC fights. Keep in mind that WWE and UFC share a parent company (TKO Holdings), so Netflix’s $10 billion investment in WWE could be a show of commitment related to future deals involving UFC. ESPN exclusively owns the full rights through next year. UFC will consider splitting the packages between multiple carriers, sources briefed on discussions told The Athletic.AdvertisementNetflix also made a big splash last month, acquiring the rights to broadcast the Women’s World Cup in 2027 and 2031. It should not surprise anyone if and when Netflix uses that as a step on the way to acquiring the men’s World Cup that are next available in 2030.As it showed with the Paul-Tyson fight and, earlier this year, the live “roast” of Tom Brady, Netflix’s live-programming team doesn’t lack the willingness to evaluate non-traditional ideas, the appetite to air them and the deepest of pockets to acquire them.And in another interesting twist, Netflix’s presence in the sports space has shown that the leagues need the streamer more than Netflix needs them. This is 180 degrees different from the traditional networks.ESPN, Fox, NBC and CBS probably would survive if they lost the NFL, but they would not be dominant forces in the sports entertainment culture. Netflix may have been helped by the NFL games, but, if it didn’t have those two Christmas games, it is hard to believe its earnings report would have been drastically different, given its steady output of shows like the second season of “Squid Game” and movies starring A-listers.The same is true for Amazon. Its Prime Video service is the leader in sports among digital players with its NFL and NBA deals. However, if Amazon decided tomorrow — they’re not, for the record, as they have long-term deals — to drop sports, would they sell one less box of paper towels?We are in the midst of a great re-bundling of how we watch sports. The biggest long-term challengers to ESPN’s supremacy and to the traditional networks’ top perch are Amazon and Netflix. While the leagues, like the NFL, really want the digital players to become more invested in their games, there is a long-term issue in play: Will Netflix turn more of its strategy to sports?Whether Netflix gets UFC will be telling, and it is hard to imagine sports being anything but a boon for Netflix’s relatively new advertising tier.How this all plays out long-term could have an impact on not only how you watch your games, but the financial makeup of sports.(Photo by Joe Sargent / Getty Images)