Netflix Christmas games features poorly-received interviews with Emmitt Smith, Barry Sanders originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
For the second-straight year, Netflix has the honor of broadcasting the NFL games on Christmas Day.
As a result, the streaming service has incorporated its own flare to the football broadcasts, from different analysts to Netflix-inspired graphics. Netflix also tried to add a new wrinkle to the broadcast, mid-game interviews with NFL greats, but they didn’t go as planned.
Both Netflix games had technical issues during the interviews, along with just a general poor reception for incorporating something that wasn’t really part of the game. Here’s how fans reacted to this decision by Netflix.
Netflix Christmas mid-game interviews
Netflix broadcasted the first two games of the Christmas Day slate on Thursday, with the Washington Commanders hosting the Dallas Cowboys and the Detroit Lions facing the Minnesota Vikings. However, theses games combined to feature no teams in playoff contention, with the Lions the lone team even still alive in the postseason race.
Perhaps as a way to make the games more intriguing, Netflix decided to produce interviews with legends of these teams during the game. For the Cowboys-Commanders game, it was Emmitt Smith and Clinton Portis who made an appearance, and in the Lions-Vikings game, it was Barry Sanders in the first half and Cris Carter in the second half.
These interviews weren’t received well, though, as fans just wanted to watch the football. It didn’t help that the former players had varying degrees of audio issues on their ends.
Netflix only broadcasts these two games this year, so the service wanted to stand out from the competition. Unfortunately, the interviews didn’t land.
