Netflix Invented a Football Holiday. It Hired U2 to Make Thanksgiving Eve Feel Like Tradition.

Thanksgiving Eve has never been a television night. Netflix is betting that a U2 Thanksgiving Eve halftime show can make it one, booking the Irish band for the NFL's first game on the Wednesday before the holiday, a Green Bay Packers visit to the Los Angeles Rams at SoFi Stadium on November 25, according to NFL.com.

The league is not being subtle about the goal. It calls the performance "a new NFL holiday tradition," as reported by Variety, which noted that Thanksgiving Eve "has not yet been recognized by everyone as a holiday in its own right."

Kickoff is 8 p.m. ET. The game streams to Netflix members in more than 200 countries in five languages, per NFL.com.

Why Does Netflix Need a New NFL Holiday?

Thanksgiving Day already has its games and its networks. Christmas became Netflix's foothold in 2024, when Beyoncé played halftime of the Ravens and Texans game in what NFL.com calls the "four-time Emmy-nominated Beyoncé Bowl." Last December, Snoop Dogg hosted a halftime party with Lainey Wilson, Huntr/X and Andrea Bocelli during Lions and Vikings, per Variety, and that broadcast became the most-streamed NFL regular season game in U.S. history, according to NFL.com.

So the playbook works. The problem is the calendar, which only has so many dates the country already watches together.

Netflix's own numbers explain the urgency. On the same Tuesday it announced U2, the company told shareholders that the fourth quarter would bring "our biggest quarterly live slate to date," including Thanksgiving Eve, a Christmas Day doubleheader and Tyson Fury against Anthony Joshua, according to its third-quarter shareholder letter. That same letter cut the company's 2026 advertising forecast to about $2.7 billion from roughly $3 billion, blaming a "slightly slower than expected rollout of some ad product capabilities."

Live football is the easiest premium inventory in streaming to sell. Netflix needs more of it, and a holiday that did not exist two years ago is cheaper to claim than one the networks already own.

What Does U2 Bring That a Younger Act Would Not?

Range, mostly. U2 formed in Dublin in 1976, so the set doubles as a 50th anniversary victory lap, per NFL.com. Their new album, Carnaval de Luz, is the band's first collection of new material in nine years, according to Variety, and it arrives 12 days before the game, per ClutchPoints via Yahoo. It will also be the band's first performance at SoFi, which opened in 2020.

Then there is the memory. At Super Bowl 36 in New Orleans in February 2002, five months after the September 11 attacks, U2 played "Where the Streets Have No Name" while the names of the victims scrolled up a giant sheet behind the stage, as Sports Illustrated recounted. NFL.com calls it "one of the most memorable moments in Super Bowl history," and for once the league's superlative is earned.

That history is the point of the booking. A band from Ireland, with no Thanksgiving of its own, is an easier global sell than an act wrapped in an American holiday. U2 is also a booking that offends almost no one, which is a useful quality for a platform still courting advertisers.

Ted Sarandos made the pitch plainly. "There's a reason U2 has headlined stadiums for decades: they don't just perform, they deliver iconic moments audiences remember forever," the Netflix co-CEO said in the announcement.

Can the U2 Thanksgiving Eve Halftime Become a Tradition?

Traditions usually get inherited, not announced. Netflix is trying to compress that timeline by stacking star power on a date that, until this season, held no NFL game at all, a slot the league carved out when it released the 2026 schedule in May, per the Rams.

The production pedigree helps. Jesse Collins Entertainment is producing the show, per NFL.com, and Collins holds two Primetime Emmys from Super Bowl halftime productions, including this year's Bad Bunny set, according to Billboard.

There is also a neat piece of scheduling irony. SoFi hosts this show in November and Super Bowl LXI in February, and on the same day U2 was announced, Puck reported that Jay-Z had chosen himself for that one, according to Fox News. One stadium is about to stage both the established halftime show and its streaming understudy within three months.

A Rock Band Booked for an Ad Sale

Strip away the nostalgia and the U2 deal is a sales tool. Netflix says it will launch its ad tier in 15 more countries in 2027, starting with a March tranche that includes nine European markets plus Colombia, Peru and New Zealand, according to the shareholder letter. Each of those launches needs proof that Netflix can deliver big, simultaneous audiences, and holiday football with a stadium act at halftime is the cleanest proof it has.

Whether a Wednesday night becomes a ritual depends on whether people actually show up on November 25. If they do, Netflix owns a date it can sell every year. If they do not, it has staged a very expensive concert on a night most of America spends driving to a relative's house.