Topline
The New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks will kick off the NFL’s 2026 season Wednesday night with a game on NBC, one of nine different television channels and streaming platforms that will broadcast matchups in the next 18 weeks, racking up a season-long bill of nearly $1,000 in subscriptions for die-hard football fans who plan to watch every single game.
It’s becoming increasingly expensive to be a sports fan—as Dallas Cowboys devotees will know
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Key Facts
Most weekly games remain on linear television channels, but local TV broadcasts only a handful of games in each market during the Sunday slate and fans who want to watch out-of-market games on CBS and Fox will have to pay for an annual subscription to NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV.
Returning subscribers would need to pay $378 for an NFL Sunday Ticket subscription, along with YouTube TV’s base plan at $83 per month (new users can get Sunday Ticket for $240 per year and introductory YouTube TV pricing starts at $45 to $60 per month).
Fans who go that route will have access to cable games airing on ESPN and the NFL Network via their YouTube TV subscription, but those without NFL Sunday Ticket will need to pay for a traditional basic cable package to access those games, at an average cost of $65 per month.
To catch 100% of the regular-season and playoff slate, fans must also subscribe to platforms that hold exclusive rights to specific windows—Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and Peacock—and, for returning YouTube TV Sunday Ticket holders, all of those subscriptions add up to a staggering $973 (before taxes).
Amazon Prime Video will exclusively air Thursday Night Football again this year, and the annual Black Friday game, costing fans $9 per month for five months.
Netflix will exclusively air select international matchups over four months, including Thursday night’s Australia game, holiday slates, including the Christmas Day games, and the service’s cheapest subscription is $9 per month.
Peacock, NBC’s streaming service, will be the exclusive broadcaster of a primetime game in week 17, and the service will cost fans a minimum of $13 for the month.
WHAT IF I DON’T HAVE AN NFL SUNDAY TICKET SUBSCRIPTION?
Then things get more complicated. Some Monday Night Football games will air exclusively on ESPN, which will require viewers to either have a cable TV package, a streaming service that includes the channel or buy a direct streaming option through ESPN Unlimited ($32 per month), ESPN Select ($14 per month), or the Disney+/Hulu/ESPN Unlimited bundle ($36 per month). Eight of the league’s nine international games—spanning London, Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Madrid and Munich—will air on NFL Network (available as a cable/live-TV channel) or via NFL+, which costs $7 per month and is also available as an add-on through live TV providers like YouTube TV.
BIG NUMBER
9. That’s how many platforms NFL games will air on this year: Netflix, Prime Video, NBC, Fox, CBS, ABC, ESPN, NFL Network and Peacock. That’s one less than last year, when YouTube also streamed one NFL game in a first-of-its-kind broadcast.
KEY BACKGROUND
It’s becoming increasingly expensive to be a sports fan. Beyond the soaring costs of game tickets, parking and stadium concessions, the home viewing experience alone has shifted from a single cable bill into a costly web of recurring subscriptions. The piecemeal model forces supporters to pay for multiple standalone apps just to follow their favorite teams week to week and, as media conglomerates continue bidding up broadcasting rights, the financial barrier to watching live sports shows no signs of lowering. The NFL’s current television rights deals are worth about $110 billion across 11 seasons, according to The New York Times. ESPN, for instance, pays the NFL around $2.7 billion per year to air 25 games annually—plus the rights to the Super Bowl this season and in 2031— and Netflix is reported to have paid $150 million for three years of rights to NFL Christmas Day games.
Further reading
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