The NFL’s Streaming Scheme Makes Watching Football Insufferable and Nearly Impossible

Like any good American, I prefer to spend my fall and winter weekends watching the best sport of all time. Thanks to streaming fragmentation, however, tuning into even a few of the biggest and best football games has become a ridiculous, remote-fumbling, and expensive feat.

The problem posed by the splicing and dicing of desirable TV and movie content is certainly not limited to football. Yet the ramifications of that fracturing are felt most by pigskin fanatics who, between college and professional game schedules, expect to tune into their favorite sport five days a week.

The NFL’s foray into the mess that onscreen entertainment has become can be traced back to 2021, when the NFL finalized an 11-year media distribution agreement that, starting in 2023, auctioned off thousands of games to various TV and streaming networks.

The league pitched the move as the best way to “reach a broader audience.” Over a year into the agreement, though, it’s clear that selling games’ media rights to what feels like a billion different networks and streaming apps has become a channel-flipping nightmare for the at-home audience keeping the league’s TV prominence alive.

The NFL website boasts 18 cable TV networks and streaming services fans can use to tune into games. Not a single one of those, however, promises access to all 272 regular-season face-offs. […]

— Read More: thefederalist.com