The NFL Is Not a Great Streaming Product Yet; What Can Be Done to Give Fans the Football They Want?
From games being strewn across an ever-increasing number of networks and streamers, it is getting extremely difficult for football fans to watch all of the games.
The NFL’s Super Wild Card Weekend and Divisional rounds are over, and as usual, the first two rounds of the league’s postseason had some thrillers, along with some clunkers. One of the biggest talking points following the games so far has been the debate over the wisdom of placing an NFL playoff game — one of the ratings prizes of the entire television year — exclusively on a streaming service for a national audience. Peacock’s first-ever streaming-exclusive playoff game drew good ratings for the Wild Card matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins, so when coupled with the fact that “Thursday Night Football” games air on Prime Video and most “Monday Night Football” contests also stream on ESPN+, the NFL has never had a bigger presence on subscription streaming services. However, that doesn’t mean that the football product being presented to fans via streaming is living up to the expectations that they have for their gameday-watching experiences.
- The NFL has plenty of opportunities to expand its streaming presence in the next few years.
- There have already been a wide range of innovations in NFL broadcasting thanks to streaming.
- The NFL won’t be a great streaming product until the league boosts the available inventory and features accompanying its games on streaming services.
What Is the NFL Doing Right When it Comes to Streaming?
There’s an old saying in football, “Your best ability is your availability.” There are more ways to stream the NFL without a cable subscription than ever before, which is undeniably a positive from fans’ perspectives. Even when discounting live TV streaming services like DIRECTV STREAM and Fubo that allow customers to watch the league via local broadcast channels like NBC, CBS, and Fox, the growing availability of NFL contests on streamers like Paramount+, Prime Video, ESPN+, and Peacock shows just how far fans have come since the days when games streamed on Yahoo Sports.
| Streaming Service | Price of Cheapest Plan w/Live NFL Games | Regular Season Games Per Season (2023) | Exclusive Games? |
|---|---|---|---|
| ESPN+ | $10.99 per month | 8 | Yes |
| Paramount+ | $5.99 per month | All in-market CBS games | No |
| Peacock | $5.99 per month | 20 | Yes |
| Prime Video | $8.99 per month | 16 (Including one Black Friday game) | Yes |
| NFL Sunday Ticket | $449 per season/$349 for YouTube TV subscribers | All out of-market CBS and Fox Sunday afternoon regular season games | Yes |
| NFL+ | $6.99 per month | All in-market and primetime games (mobile and tablet only) | No |
| Disney+ | $7.99 per month | 1 (“Toy Story”-themed simulcast of an ESPN game) | No |
It’s fair to say that NFL football has made at least a semi-successful entrance into the world of streaming. In addition to traditional broadcasts of the games themselves, streaming has become a proven medium for fan-favorite offerings like alternate broadcasts; ESPN+ sometimes offers “ManningCast” presentations of “Monday Night Football” featuring commentary from Peyton and Eli Manning, and Prime Video offers several different alternate streams of “TNF” every season, including the stat-focused “Prime Vision” and a partnership with LeBron James’ “The Shop.”
One survey published by Deloitte last summer found that fans are responding to the ease of use that streaming provides, as well as the production extras like alternate broadcasts and advanced stats — like Prime Video’s X-Ray feature with Next Gen Stats. The study found that 56% of self-identified sports fans said that streaming provided a better watching experience for live events than traditional models, and 57% said that streaming was more interactive than watching on traditional TV.
Amazon Prime Video
Amazon Prime Video is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 10,000+ movies, TV shows, and Prime Originals like “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” “Jack Ryan,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “The Boys,” and more. Subscribers can also add third-party services like Max, Showtime, STARZ, and dozens more with Amazon Prime Video Channels. Prime Video also offers exclusive live access to NFL Thursday Night Football.
What Can the NFL Do to Improve Its Streaming Product?
The NFL is a good streaming product, but it hasn’t achieved nearly the greatness on the medium that it has on linear TV yet. If nothing else, ratings prove this; according to Forbes, NFL games made up 93% of the most-watched TV programs in 2023. Before the Dolphins and Chiefs Wild Card game on Peacock, the most-streamed game in NFL history was the Week 13 2023 “TNF” game between the Dallas Cowboys and Seattle Seahawks, which turned into a 45-31 thriller. According to Sports Media Watch's compilation of Nielsen ratings, that number still left the game as the fourth most-watched game of the week. The three games above it were all on linear channels, and two pulled ratings of 20 million viewers or more.
Graphic courtesy of Sports Media Watch.
The streaming environment brings with it far more technological challenges for viewers than the tried-and-true broadcast, cable, and satellite platforms do. From latency delays to streaming outages to poor picture quality, it is rare when a major game on streaming doesn’t generate significant frustration amongst fans for some tech issue. However, many — but not all — of these disruptions come from internet connectivity and bandwidth issues on the viewer’s side. So while those are still major concerns that streaming services need to address, those are just part of the equation.
From a programming side, how can the NFL’s streaming partners improve their offerings to bring more fans in? More inventory would be a start. An NFL streaming platform with the entire lineup of both in and out-of-market games every week is still a pipe dream, as the league’s TV contracts run through 2033, and getting permission from all of the NFL’s broadcast partners to create such a service now seems like a non-starter.
From a fan perspective, such a service would be a huge improvement. A recent survey from Hub found that 73% of streaming viewers say that it is too hard to keep track of what programming is available on which streaming services. The Deloitte survey also pointed out that 59% of sports fans admitted that they’d pay more to watch all of their favorite events on one platform.
A good intermediary step would be bringing Fox around to the idea of streaming its weekly inventory of NFL games somewhere. Fox is the only major broadcast network — all of which offer NFL games — that does not provide fans with a cable-free streaming option; the only ways to watch Fox’s in-market NFL contests via streaming currently are with a subscription to a pay-TV plan that provides TV Everywhere credentials for the Fox Sports app. Fox Corp.’s CEO Lachlan Murdoch said in May 2023 that the company was “ready to go” with more streaming options for offering live sports like the NFL, but such options would wait until the company finds it “necessary or prudent” to create them. Unfortunately, that means that audiences will simply have to wait until Fox is ready to create a good option to stream in-market NFL games.
Smaller, cheaper bundles on NFL Sunday Ticket could also be a short-term way to boost the streaming audience of NFL games. NFL chief media officer Brian Rolapp has said that the league hasn’t seen much demand for single-team bundles when the service was moving from DIRECTV to YouTube TV. To get the new streaming-exclusive Sunday Ticket, fans had to pay up to $449. Less expensive options with fewer games and teams would give fans a way to subscribe to the service without having to pay hundreds of dollars to access games that they don’t want to watch.
While this is also unlikely in the immediate future, another stop-gap measure would be for the NFL to convince its TV partners to allow it to stream games on NFL+ on devices larger than a tablet. A study published by Antenna demonstrated that NFL+ had more subscribers than Sunday Ticket as of September 2023, despite the fact that it only allows its users to watch games on mobile devices. Of course, at its peak, NFL+ costs only $14.99 per month, a significantly lower financial investment than Sunday Ticket.
NFL+ offers in-market games as well as all nationally broadcast contests, which gives fans an outlet for watching all NFL games appearing in their area on one app without a cable subscription. This is the closest the league can come to a universal platform for now, and it doesn’t hurt that it already offers live streams of NFL Network and NFL RedZone on the app, making for an excellent fan experience in terms of the amount of programming it has.
Streamers like ESPN+, Paramount+, and Peacock should also seriously consider incorporating more stats, analytics, and even social media features into their respective NFL viewing experience. In another report from Deloitte, data showed that a big portion of sports fans of every age group, even Baby Boomers — who are traditionally more resistant to watching live sports on streaming services — say that they’d be interested in a more stat-based stream like Amazon’s Prime Vision. Younger generations like Gen Z are also interested in incorporating more social media functions like the ability to discuss the action live with other viewers with streams of sports events.
Graph courtesy of Deloitte.
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.
What’s on the NFL’s Streaming Horizon?
Despite the recent increase in the number of NFL streaming options, there are still many ways for the league to expand its reach with cord-cutters over the next few years. After the success of exclusive games on Peacock in the regular season and playoffs, it seems reasonable to assume that streamers will get more chances to offer games that won’t be available on linear TV outside of home markets. The league voted in December to double the number of international games that it plays every season from four to eight starting in 2025, and therefore, it stands to reason that ESPN+ and potentially other streaming platforms will be able to land games in undesirable time zones.
Speaking of ESPN, it’s looking increasingly likely that the league will become even more closely connected with the worldwide leader in sports in the future. Last week, reports began to circulate that ESPN and the NFL were advancing in talks that would see the league purchase a minority stake in the channel. That would give the NFL a huge presence on the future streaming platform currently in the planning stages at ESPN. Disney has long been working on launching a service that includes all of ESPN’s programming. If the league ended up partnering with the network, such a service could feature all content from the NFL Network and NFL RedZone channels, and would almost certainly carry all “Monday Night Football” games every season.
The curve ball here is a class-action lawsuit that the league is currently facing from NFL Sunday Ticket customers. First filed in 2015, the lawsuit has crawled through the legal process but was set for trial by a judge earlier this month despite several attempts by the league to have it dismissed. If the ruling of that suit comes out against the league, it could create a free-for-all for NFL broadcast and streaming rights the likes of which have never been seen. That’s not a particularly likely outcome, but it’s more likely than it was before the case was sent to trial.
ESPN+
ESPN+ is a live TV streaming service that gives access to thousands of live sporting events, original shows like Peyton’s Place, the entire library of 30 for 30, E:60, The Last Dance, as well exclusive written analysis from top ESPN insiders. Sports available on ESPN+ include NFL, MLB, NHL, UFC, College Football, F1, Bundesliga, PGA Tour, La Liga, and more.
The NFL is a Good, Not Great Streaming Product
It’s hard to argue that the NFL has made significant strides in offering its games outside of traditional TV. The inventory of live NFL games on services like Paramount+ attests to this, as do the popularity of innovative alternate broadcasts and similar features that streaming can offer much more easily alongside an NFL game than linear TV can.
NFL games are a good streaming product, but they haven’t achieved greatness yet. To reach this benchmark, the league and its streaming partners have to improve the inventory of games available to cord cutting fans without a pay TV subscription, as well as the amount and quality of features that accompany NFL games on platforms like Prime Video and Paramount+ that carry live NFL action.
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Paramount Plus
Paramount+ is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 40,000+ TV show episodes from BET, CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr. and more. The lineup includes “1883,” “Tulsa King,” “Star Trek: Discovery,” Nickelodeon’s “SpongeBob SquarePants,” and “PAW Patrol.” Subscribers can watch the NFL, college football, The Masters, college basketball, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa, Serie A, and NWSL. The service also offers the option to watch your live CBS affiliate. The upgraded ad-free package includes premium movies and shows from Showtime.
