NFL+ Could Become Home to Exclusive Games in Future, as League Prepares for Life After Cable
The writing is on the wall for cable, and the NFL knows it. The new carriage dispute between Disney and Spectrum which has caused channels like ESPN to go dark for nearly 15 million customers in the United States is just the latest example of how broken the traditional cable model is.
The league launched NFL+ last year to try and get out ahead of cable’s collapse. The league has augmented the app this season, raising the price but adding a livestream of the NFL RedZone channel to its Premium tier, which fans can now subscribe to for $14.99 per month.
According to reporting from Front Office Sports, the league has more plans for NFL+ in the future. That could eventually include the offering of exclusive games on the platform; NFL+ already offers live in-market and nationally-broadcast games to fans if they’re willing to watch on their phone.
NFL Media GM David Jurenka spoke with Front Office Sports about the possibility of putting exclusive games on NFL+, saying the league’s media contracts gave it some room to offer games that wouldn’t be available anywhere else. Nevertheless, fans should expect the league to be strategic about how it deploys exclusive contests on its streaming platform.
“If it makes sense in terms of how we maximize reach and it’s complementary to the broader media model that we have, I think we’ll look at those things,” Jurenka said.
The league has made a concerted effort to offer more games via streaming in recent years, as the number of cable customers in the United States has steadily declined. National broadcasts of “Thursday Night Football” are now only available on Prime Video, and Peacock will get an exclusive NFL game in both the regular season and the playoffs for the first time in the 2023 regular season. ESPN+ will also stream games from the wild card and divisional rounds of the NFL playoffs this year.
The NFL is still one of the most popular products on television, and it knows how important it is to the survival of cable in the short-term. Nothing can save pay TV from its eventual fate, but the departure of the NFL from broadcast and cable channels would certainly hasten its demise. The league isn’t pulling any games from linear TV just yet, but the offering of exclusive contests on NFL+ is the next step in that process.
NFL+
NFL+ allows fans to watch live local and primetime games on mobile and tablet devices. And with an NFL+ Premium subscription, you can watch replays of every single game without ads, condensed game replays, and coaches film. The service also allows fans to choose their audio stream (home, away, and national calls). The Premium plan also includes NFL RedZone on TV.