You’re going to need a play-call sheet to keep track of where to watch the National Football League on television this season.
The NFL season kicks off Thursday night with the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs hosting the Detroit Lions on NBC and its Peacock app.
Long gone are the days when NFL games were shown on one or two networks.
The league is showing more games across broadcast networks, cable, and digital streaming platforms this season than ever before, and more games exclusively on streaming.
NBC, Fox, CBS, ESPN/ABC — as well as their streaming apps — and Amazon will all broadcast some games this year. The NFL’s own streaming app and YouTube TV will also stream some games.
Why the NFL matters Football is the rare event that millions of people still watch live and advertisers will pay up for as viewership for TV other than sports rapidly declines.
Excluding the Super Bowl, the NFL made up more than half of Fox’s viewership last season and around one-third of CBS and NBC’s, according to the MoffettNathanson report.
“The NFL is the biggest driver of network ratings and advertising dollars during the fall TV season, the analysts said. “The NFL remains an outlier when compared to all other forms of linear content.
So, NBC will show “Sunday Night Football” on primetime TV and Peacock. Fox will show National Football Conference games on its broadcast network.
CBS will show American Football Conference games on its network and Paramount+. (CBS, which has the rights to the Super Bowl in February, will also show the game on Nickelodeon.)
ESPN will air “Monday Night Football” games on ESPN and ESPN+. And Amazon holds the rights to Thursday night games, shown on Amazon Prime Video.
The NFL itself is also betting on streaming.
The NFL Sunday Ticket package, which broadcasts all out-of-market NFL games to fans, is moving to YouTube TV, owned by Google, this year after nearly 30 years at satellite provider DirecTV.
“We have been focused on increased digital distribution of our games and this partnership is yet another example of us looking towards the future,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said last year.