The NFL is selling more games to Netflix – but is it nearing peak growth?

The National Football League (NFL) season may not kick off for another four months but broadcast plans for the 2026 season are well underway.

The league has confirmed television schedules, divvyed out additional live games, and continues to renegotiate contracts in the background.

Its strategy is simple. It wants to maximise the value of its inventory by carving out new packages and timeslots for live games to attract new players to the table – ideally deep-pocketed streaming services.

It also wants to cement its year-round dominance of the US sports landscape by amplifying the appeal of other events, such as the combine, the draft and pre-season. As this week proved, even the schedule is a major event.

Netflix will show five games globally from 2026 (Image credit: Getty Images)

More NFL on television

As fans pored over the fixture list to see what it meant for their team’s on-field fortunes, the media industry was analysing what it all meant for ratings and revenues.

The NFL had been using the off-season to sell additional live games that were formerly part of ESPN’s Monday Night Football doubleheader experiment, created by an expanded international series, and by moving matches earmarked for local broadcasts into dedicated national slots.

Fox secured two extra matchups, most likely an international series matchup from Munich in week ten and a Saturday game in week 15, while NBC added an additional Saturday contest in week 17.

More eye-catchingly, Netflix added another three live games to its slate as part of a four-year extension to its global deal. The streamer will once again air two games on Christmas Day, as well as a week one international series fixture from Australia, a game in a newly created window on Thanksgiving Eve, and a week 18 clash on Saturday 9^th January.

On top of that, Netflix will also air the ‘NFL Honors’ awards event, fitting in with its strategy of hosting content that straddles the line between sports and entertainment.

The NFL’s ability to generate this incremental revenue without diminishing the appeal of its core broadcast packages or alienating existing partners is evidence of a market with a seemingly insatiable appetite for gridiron.

ESPN will also have three additional timeslots as per its acquisition of the NFL Network, a transaction which saw the league acquire a stake in the self-proclaimed ‘worldwide leader in sports’.

The two haven’t always had a perfect relationship but their symbiotic connection is now stronger than ever. There was even an appearance from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell at Disney’s upfront event, which detailed preparations for ESPN’s first ever live Super Bowl production next February.

Renegotiation progress

The primacy of the Super Bowl in American media and the scramble for any kind of NFL content is further evidence that its status as the most important programming in US broadcasting has seemingly never been more secure.

Recent initiatives have only served to increase its audience and revenues without cannibalising existing income streams or viewership.

And now, having seen the National Basketball Association (NBA) secure US$76 billion for its current cycle, it believes its rising importance to broadcasters should be reflected in the fees they pay.

Accordingly, the league intends to exert opt-out clauses in its 11-year US$110 billion broadcast deals with Amazon, CBS, Fox, ESPN and NBC. The opt-out comes into effect in 2029, but the NFL hopes to secure revised terms as soon as next season.

Its broadcasters will resent having to pay more for live NFL so soon, with early reports suggesting the league is seeking as much as a 50 per cent uplift from some partners, using the threat of streaming services to gain leverage.

However, the trade-off is that they will retain the most important content in US broadcasting until 2034 and avoid the risk of alienating or angering the NFL, which could take punitive action when its contract comes up for renewal.

Even once these renegotiations have concluded, the NFL still has some economic levers to pull. An expanded 18-game regular season would mean more inventory, more international series games mean more timeslots, and there is speculation that the NFL would like to schedule games on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the not too-distant future.

On the face of it, fans and broadcasters can’t get enough, and the NFL can keep turning on the content tap without saturating the market. But looking further ahead, will regulatory and economic headwinds mean it doesn’t hold as many cards as it once thought?

Tom Brady is Fox’s star analyst (Image credit: Getty Images)

When will the broadcasters say no?

At the moment, there is little desire by the league’s incumbent partners to risk losing the NFL – it’s simply too important to their business model. But it’s not unrealistic to suggest that it might get to a point where the price demanded for content to stay relevant in the broadcasting industry simply isn’t worth paying.

Broadcasters have finite budgets, which means there is a ceiling in terms of what they can pay. Higher fees for the NFL mean cutbacks elsewhere, whether it’s in content, headcount or further expansion.

The NFL remains an unparalleled driver of viewership and subscriptions but, at some stage, the return on investment may not make much sense when compared to other sports and other programming – particularly for those especially dependent on advertising.

On top of this, CBS (Paramount), ESPN (Disney) and NBC (Comcast) all have other businesses and international markets to fall back on should they wish to scale back their television presence. Meanwhile, Amazon, Google and Netflix see sport as complementary to their core propositions.

Fox, whose business comprises almost exclusively linear television, cannot say the same. Without a studio division, a fully-fledged direct-to-consumer (DTC) proposition, or anything else to support it, Fox is uniquely dependent on the NFL and has the least capital behind it.

Those with the most money are the ones most likely to walk away, while the broadcaster with the greatest need has the least amount of cash. While this dynamic is unlikely to come into play in the immediate future, it does suggest that the NFL has a balancing act to maintain.

US President Donald Trump says he “doesn’t like” the current US broadcast situation (Image credit: Getty Images)

Regulatory storm clouds

All of this is why its reported behind-the-scenes machinations in Washington to prevent more NFL games moving to streaming services are so intriguing. According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Fox owner Rupert Murdoch met President Donald Trump in February, warning that if streamers obtained more matches, it could be the death of network television in the US.

Shortly after, the US Department of Justice launched an investigation to determine whether the NFL’s broadcast contracts violate anticompetitive practices, forcing fans to pay too much in subscription fees to watch games.

There is also the question of whether the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which exempts the league from antitrust laws, allows it to sell rights centrally, and sign exclusive deals, is fit for purpose in the modern age.

The NFL’s strategy of carving out new packages for new players to drive incremental revenues is now facing unexpected scrutiny.

The NFL refutes such allegations, arguing that 87 per cent of its games are available without a subscription. However, CBS and Fox have multiple games in a single timeslot, meaning the only way to watch a particular match is to subscribe to NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube. In the local markets of participating teams, all games are available for free.

It is unlikely that the antitrust exemption will be repealed. It would arguably lead to greater fragmentation and see college and high school sports subject to greater competition (the NFL does not schedule matches on Fridays and Saturdays because of the exemption).

But in a political climate where media regulation is viewed in transactionary terms, anything is possible – especially when cheaper costs for sports fans would be a popular move.

Trump told US news programme ‘Full Measure’ he wasn’t sure whether the government would intervene but added that the cost of watching the NFL could “ruin the game”.

“You’ve got people that love football, they’re great people, they don’t make enough money to go and pay this, it’s tough,” he said. “I don’t like it.

“[The NFL is] making a lot of money, they could make a little bit less and they could let the people see.”

If the market doesn’t determine any peak, perhaps government intervention will.

But for now, the NFL juggernaut is unstoppable.

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