Netflix’s talks to air future USC-Notre Dame games ‘still ongoing’ despite network resistance

Universities are attempting to find every possible way to eek out another dollar in the NIL era of college athletics. Even storied programs like USC and Notre Dame are doing everything they can to gain a competitive edge.

That’s why when Puck’s John Ourand reported last month that USC had approached Netflix about airing its annual rivalry game against the Fighting Irish in 2026, it wasn’t particularly surprising. Sure, schools haven’t directly courted streamers to sell one-off games in the past, but in today’s revenue-maxing landscape, it was only a matter of time before someone tried. After all, big rivalry games would fit perfectly into Netflix’s strategy of “eventizing” live sports.

The issue, of course, is that both USC and Notre Dame are currently locked into media rights agreements with legacy broadcast networks; the Trojans as part of the Big Ten media rights deals with Fox, CBS, and NBC, and the Irish as part of their longtime partnership with NBC. Those networks receive broadcast rights to home games played by the schools under the terms of their respective agreements.

USC, perhaps cleverly or perhaps naively, proposed playing its rivalry game against Notre Dame at a neutral site, potentially Las Vegas or Mexico City, as a means of circumventing these deals, thereby allowing the game to be sold to Netflix. When the networks caught wind of the plan they “went berserk,” according to Ourand. Of course they would. Such an arrangement would directly undermine the deals for which they pay hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Despite this, a new report from Ryan Kartje in the Los Angeles Times reveals that “conversations with Netflix and USC over future scheduling rights are actually still ongoing.” However, “it’s unclear if there’s a path forward” given the (legitimate) concerns of the networks.

Kartje also reports that USC didn’t necessarily go behind the Big Ten’s back in an attempt to get this deal done. The school informed the conference it was “exploring non-traditional options for continuing the [Notre Dame game],” and even broached the idea of selling the game to Netflix. So the Big Ten wasn’t blindsided, as initial reports indicated. Rather, the conference simply sided with its network partners in how to interpret the current media rights agreements.

Given that talks between the two sides are ongoing, it’s possible that USC is willing to test the bounds of its current agreement, in which case a legal battle could be in order.

That’s still a ways away, and it’s more likely that cooler heads will prevail. But it’s clear that USC wants to find some way to earn more in the way of media rights revenue, and the school is thinking outside of the box to do so.