Netflix’s Gabe Spitzer goes deep on NFL strategy, Women’s World Cup plans, interest in men’s World Cup

Gabe Spitzer is well aware that he has one of the best jobs in sports media. As the VP/Global Live Sports & Entertainment for Netflix, Spitzer oversees the streaming giant’s global live sports strategy. His responsibilities include managing rights negotiations and partnerships with the many leagues that Netflix deals with including the NFL, FIFA, MLB, WWE, and combat sports. If you are an agent with a front-facing client in sports broadcasting, like Walt Disney, he has the ability to make dreams come true.

Spitzer is in Melbourne, Australia, this week for the Week 1 game between the Rams and 49ers that will stream live on Netflix on Thursday night. This will be the NFL’s first regular-season game played in Australia. Prior to him making the 7,900-mile journey from L.A. to Melbourne, he was a guest on my Sports Media Podcast and we discussed myriad topics.

Asked why Netflix wanted to expand its relationship with the NFL to five games — up from two last year — Spitzer said the NFL came to Netflix around last year’s Super Bowl (as well as other rightsholder partners) informing companies they would have additional game inventory. One huge incentive for Netflix to acquire added inventory was to start the season with an international game given the streamer has over 325 million paid global subscribers.

“It was a bit open-ended in terms of what was possible with the NFL,” Spitzer said. “As we started looking at potential games and the potential dates they had available, we wanted to make sure it felt intentional in terms of how we were showing up across the season and in moments that matter. A Week One game says Netflix is in the NFL business and live sports business. Thanksgiving Eve is obviously an exciting one with Rams-Packers in L.A and it’s also a date that they’ve never done before. So for our first two games this year, it’s two firsts for us and for the NFL.”

Spitzer said Netflix has completed roughly 90% of its NFL talent hires for 2026 (Look for WWE superstar Seth Rollins to return to the studio for the Bears-Packers game on Christmas if schedules can work out). He said the company considered many candidates for the game analyst position that eventually went to Pro Football HOFer Luke Kuechly.

“He wasn’t the first obvious choice because he hadn’t done TV before,” Spitzer said. “He’d been on Panthers radio. We had an initial meeting with him and loved him. Immediately you felt like he was thinking about the game differently. We brought him in for a rehearsal with Noah Eagle at the NBC studios in Stamford (Conn.) in early July. From our side and from the NBC side with people like Fred Gaudelli, who’s a legend in this space, I think he surprised all of us. He was super analytical but also relatable. We know this is going to be the first time he’s done a big national game and we will give him all the support possible, but we’re also really confident that he’s going to knock it out of the park.”

Spitzer says the upcoming Women’s World Cup, which begins on June 24, 2027, in Brazil, is the most ambitious project Netflix has ever undertaken on the live side. Netflix holds the exclusive U.S. and Puerto Rico broadcast rights in English and Spanish for both the 2027 and 2031 WWC. In a separate deal, it has the English and French rights in Canada for the same tournaments.

“Keep in mind that we’ve only had live functionality on Netflix for a little over three years,” Spitzer said. “With the NFL and others, most of these have been single day events. So to go from those to 30 days of programming, 64 matches, live for a full eight hours every day for an entire month for arguably one of the biggest sporting events in the world is something that we’re not taking lightly. We’ve gone deep into preparation for about a year. It’s under 300 days to go so a lot of work still to be done but we have full confidence that we’re going to nail it and I can’t wait for it to start.”

The goal of every World Cup broadcaster is to find a lane where you appeal to the hardcore soccer fan as well as a viewer tuning in because it’s an event. Spitzer and his team have spent hours upon hours figuring out how to strike the right editorial balance.

“It’s really about a third, a third, and a third,” he said. “That first third is the hardcore super fan. That second third are people who are sports fans really interested in coming in for the storytelling and falling in love with individual players. If you can get them in through that storytelling, the same way they do it with Olympic features and other things, they’ll watch and be advocates. That final third is what we would call more the bandwagon fans. If you’re in the U.S., you might just watch the U.S. games, or if you are in Canada, you might watch the Canada games. We have to make a World Cup for all of them. But I really think in the way we’re approaching it, we have to nail it with the hardcore fans first. If they’ve bought in and they think we’re telling the World Cup story in the right way and the coverage is strong, they’re gonna be the advocates for those other two thirds. That doesn’t mean we can’t still do World Cup 101 explainers. Part of the benefit we hope of being on Netflix is that we’re building this massive World Cup hub where you can come in and there’s gonna be a ton of content at your fingertips and that’s going to offer viewer choice to create a journey for yourself of how you want to consume and be educated on the World Cup.”

With Netflix locked into the Women’s World Cup, Spitzer said that the company is looking forward to talking to FIFA about the 2030 men’s World Cup. Those conversations could come late this year or early next year.

“Us wanting to have a conversation doesn’t mean that we’re bidding on it,” Spitzer said. “The men’s World Cup is as big as it gets for a global event and we’re already in business with FIFA on the women’s side, which we’re thrilled about. That’s what we’re focused on. We are waiting on FIFA. They’re having conversations with a number of different partners and they haven’t started an official process. When the time is right, obviously, we’ll have those conversations. We’ll do the analysis internally and we’ll decide if it makes sense for us. What I will say is a lot of the press right now is very focused on the U.S. and that makes sense. It’s a big market. We are a global company. We are in many different countries around the world. We just had the World Baseball Classic rights in Japan only. Even when we’re having conversations with FIFA, I’d say it’s not necessarily just U.S. specific. We could be looking at other markets. We’ll see how everything shakes out.”

Spitzer said he read SBJ’s recent piece by Austin Karp on sports documentary creators adjusting to the changing landscape and found the piece was thoughtful. Given Netflix’s place in the sports documentary space, his opinion carries weight on where things may be headed.

“It’s just in an interesting transition point right now,” Spitzer said. “We’re still huge believers in sports docs at Netflix. I think there was a certain genre — call it the present day, let’s follow a team for a season or a year — I think we probably greenlit too many and other people greenlit too many. It started to feel like everything was the same. We pride ourselves on authentic access and we want to make sure that that doesn’t feel surface level. It probably has gotten to a point where maybe that access is too surface level, maybe leagues or teams or athletes are trying to exert too much control. But there is still incredible stuff out there. Last week we launched a really strong doc on Raygun, the Australian break dancer (“Raygun: Breaking Badly”). So it’s not slowing down. It might just be a reexamination.”