Black NFL Logo. Photo Credit: Creative Commons
The days of turning on the TV and choosing which NFL game to watch are over.
The National Football League continues to expand its games across multiple streaming platforms. It is now necessary for fans to have multiple streaming platforms just to keep up with what is happening across the league.
In the past, NFL games were easy to find and watch through cable television and during the early days of streaming. Anyone could simply switch channels to watch another game. Nowadays, even though traditional television is still trying to hold on to live sports like football, streaming services are taking over the NFL.
Well-known networks like CBS, NBC, and Fox still broadcast many games throughout the NFL season, but streaming services are now taking a larger role when it comes to viewing NFL games.
These services now have exclusive rights to certain football matchups throughout the season, including Amazon Prime Video, ESPN, and Paramount+.
Certain services have specific packages that make them better for watching certain events. A major change is Amazon Prime Video being the only streaming service that allows viewers to watch Thursday Night Football for the entire season.
In recent years, several important regular-season and playoff games have run only through Peacock. On occasion, only certain streaming services show certain Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football games.
This creates a major obstacle for NFL fans around the world trying to keep up with the league. Viewers have to rely on multiple platforms, or they will have to keep up through apps they cannot watch. It will take around 10 streaming services if fans want to follow the entire season.
“If the streaming stuff keeps up, we won’t afford to watch it on the tube either. I’m not paying for ten different services,” Reddit user Elder-Enigma said.
The NFL wants to make this happen. The league increases its revenue by working with multiple companies and increasing the value of their media rights.
This business model is also beneficial to the streaming services. They know that people prefer to watch live sports, allowing them to grow their audiences and increase the value of their services.
This new system works great for the league and each streaming service, but the prices of the services can cause frustration for fans. Each service requires a separate subscription, and it can be hard to choose the right one.
There can also be technical issues to consider for each of these platforms. Problems like buffering, delays, and lag can hurt the fans’ experiences when watching the games. This can especially happen during important games.
Despite all these challenges for the fans, streaming services will continue. Other sports leagues like the NBA, MLS, and MLB are moving toward the same direction as the NFL. Fans will now need to adjust the way they watch sports as a whole.
What started as something so simple will continue to be something more complicated as the era of streaming continues to take over.
