Tonight’s Kansas City Chiefs clash with the LA Chargers from São Paulo will be a purely online event on YouTube, and perhaps the kick off to the future of football & streaming.
For the first time ever, every single NFL game this season will be available on one streaming platform or another. That’s all 272 regular season games from last night’s grinding 24-20 win by current champions the Philadelphia Eagles over the Dallas Cowboys to January 4, 2026, and then up to Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara, California’s Levi’s Stadium.
In fact, there are 20 NFL games that can only be found on streaming this season.
Building off some legacy deals, some special seasonal match-ups like Netflix’s Christmas Day games, and more, the globally branding Roger Goodell-run league is all in online with YouTube, Paramount+, Peacock, Amazon, the newly launched ESPN Unlimited and Fox One, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and of course NFL+. With the exception of today’s certain to be Taylor Swift attended Chiefs vs, Chargers game out of Brazil free to all on YouTube at 5 pm PT, the other six international games from Ireland to Spain and more will be shown on NFL+ at the same time they are on the now Disney-owned NFL Network.
A state of affairs made much more easily accessible as of the September 3 announcement that NFL+ Premium can be added for an extra $10 to the newly expanded Disney and ESPN bundle. Last month, as well as the House of Mouse purchasing the NFL Network, the league now owns 10% of Disney’s sports division.
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Put simply, no one streamer has the full package, but you will not need a cable or satellite subscription to watch pro-football in America this year. “Football will be on TV as long as there is TV, there just may not be an audience there,” an Bev. Hills sports agent states. “Already, they’re on their phones, tablets, on other platforms that will supply games the way they want them.”
“We’ve long held the belief that the NFL and sports in general is the glue to the Pay TV ecosystem, and the more sports rights that go over the top clearly put added pressure on the traditional linear ecosystem without full exclusivity,” says research institute MoffettNathanson senior analyst Robert Fishman, who worked on study entitled “NFL: The Loss Of Linear Exclusivity” released Thursday. Fishman also notes the premium pricing that streamers and platforms, some linked to broadcast nets, some not, generally charge for their football games is the mechanism “to limit the potential cannibalization” of more traditional media, for now.
Whether or not that is the beginning of the end for linear TV is a prophecy game more than anything right now. Clearly, the sheer convenience of jumping around from NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox as opposed to the Frankenstein-style stitching together of a schedule on various streamers, still makes broadcast TV attractive and a big player. Yet, at the same time, the loss of ultimate NFL exclusivity for linear TV undeniably changes the rules of game for the biggest brand in media.
“The NFL continues to prove that they are the most important IP within the larger media ecosystem,” Fishman states of where this could be all going or already has gone. “They’re continuing to think about the long term future of their rights, and striking deals to ensure that there is viewership from all different angles.”
That’s the End run.
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