Key Points
- Netflix’s Christmas Day NFL games drove its largest subscriber sign-up period of 2025, adding about 430,000 U.S. users.
- Ampere found live events generated 60 percent of major streaming acquisition spikes, led overwhelmingly by sports.
- Subscribers acquired through live sports showed higher retention than those gained through promotions or scripted releases.
Netflix’s investment in two Christmas Day football games delivered the platform’s largest sign-up period in 2025, according to a new report released by Ampere Analysis on Tuesday.
The report showed live National Football League (NFL) broadcasts, paired with the release of the final episodes of “Stranger Things,” generated roughly 430,000 new U.S. subscribers for Netflix in December — the third-largest sign-up surge since Ampere began tracking that data in 2018.
Across the U.S. subscription video-on-demand market in 2025, live programming emerged as the most reliable source of major sign-up spikes. Ampere’s analysis showed that live events accounted for 60 percent of standout subscription peaks across major platforms, compared with about 30 percent driven by promotional activity.
Scripted releases represented roughly 10 percent of notable spikes and were almost entirely tied to Netflix, with “1923” Season 2 on Paramount Plus as the sole exception.
Sports dominated live-driven acquisition, accounting for 85 percent of live-related sign-ups, while award shows made up the remainder. The data also indicated that live sports subscriptions tended to be more durable than typical acquisition events. According to Ampere’s SVOD Economics U.S. data, 45 percent of users who signed up for Netflix’s first Christmas Day NFL game in 2024 were still active one year later. Among those who had churned, 10 percent returned specifically for the 2025 event.
The Christmas Day NFL games in 2025 trailed only two prior U.S. acquisition moments for the service: its first-ever live event, the “Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson” bout, which drove approximately 1.4 million sign-ups, and its inaugural Christmas Day NFL games in 2024, which added about 650,000 subscribers.
Netflix is scheduled to disclose its full-year and fourth quarter (Q4) financial earnings on Tuesday.
