The NFL season is two weeks away and fans are growing eager to watch their favorite teams take the field. Because of all the excitement, the NFL continues to explore more ways to stream games and take more money from fans’ pockets. The issue became apparent when Netflix announced it is the only place fans can watch the NFL’s Christmas games. Peacock also signed on to be the exclusive broadcaster of the first game of the regular season in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
With Netflix and Peacock being added to the streaming rotation, the NFL now has seven different streaming services fans must have if they want to watch all 272 games. With all those streaming services comes a monthly paywall, forcing fans, who want to keep up with the games, to constantly shell out money.
Even before streaming services took over, the NFL never made it easy for fans to access its games from the comfort of their couch. The NFL used to have an exclusive agreement with Direct TV, which allowed only Direct TV users to access NFL Sunday Ticket and enabled fans to watch every game.
In 2023, NFL Sunday Ticket was moved to a streaming service on YouTube TV, which will stay until 2030 with a 7-year, $14 billion contract. The problem with the contract was its price; it was expensive for fans to pay for YouTube TV, which is $72.99 a month, and add on NFL Sunday Ticket, which is $479 a season not including primetime games.
Due to costs, fans feel more inclined to pirate games to save hundreds of dollars a month. Pirating games, however, is not only illegal but also, poses the risk of downloading viruses that could steal your personal information. A surprising number of fans are willing to take that risk, as a study in 2023 found more than 35 percent of fans admitted to regularly using illegal streaming sites to watch football games.
There may be some people not in the mood to break the law wondering how to spend the least amount of money to watch every game. An NBC New York study found if you were to only purchase streaming services for the exact number of months needed, it would total $857.86.
Streaming services were supposed to be the cheaper, more effective alternative to cable. However, they have made watching football more confusing and less attainable due to the combined price of purchasing seven different services.
If the NFL made every game, no matter the time or place, be put on one easy-to-understand platform and lowered the price of said platform, hundreds of thousands of more fans would buy and watch games together.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely the NFL would do that due to how lucrative it is for the league to outsource its games to other providers. For instance, YouTube TV’s bank-breaking deal with the NFL, along with other monster deals signed by the NFL would prevent the NFL from changing this anti-fan agenda.
Quinn Elfers is a sophomore studying journalism at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. Want to share your thoughts about the column? Let Quinn know by emailing him at me989022@ohio.edu.
