At the start of the NFL season, some fans were rudely surprised when they couldn’t stream Sunday Night Football on NBC or their local NFL games on FOX. While Live TV Streaming Services have added hundreds of local channels over the last year, some of them are not actually your local affiliate.
In order to offer live locals in some smaller markets, services like YouTube TV, Hulu Live TV, PlayStation Vue, and fuboTV have added a National Feed for NBC and FOX. While it looks similar to your local affiliate and carries prime-time programming, it’s missing a key feature — locals news and sports. As of now, the network’s national feeds have yet to get distribution rights major sports like NFL games.
For instance, FOX’s National Feed called FoxNet generally will air programming from their other stations like FS1, Fox Soccer Plus, Fox News, and Fox Business Network in its place. Last night, during Sunday Night Football — the NBC national feed aired ‘Premier League Review’ instead of the Atlanta Falcons/Philadelphia Eagles game.
As more and more actual local affiliates get added to the different Live TV Streaming Services, the issue of not getting local and national games will be a thing of the past. But in the case of the NFL, there is another option. While you won’t be able to stream the games on your big screen — the league now offers free mobile and tablet streaming across NFL and Yahoo! media properties like the Y! Sports and NFL Apps.