The NFL plans to continue offering a diversified broadcast package despite political and public criticism of the league expanding streaming opportunities with Netflix and Amazon.
“We love our model,” NFL president of media distribution Hans Schroeder said Friday, discussing the NFL’s schedule release for the 2026 regular season.
The majority of regular-season games — more than 86% — are available on free, over-the-air television via traditional broadcast partners NBC, ABC, CBS and FOX.
But Netflix carved out a slightly bigger portion of the vast single-game opportunities. The streaming giant has the first NFL regular-season game in Australia — Sept. 10 between the 49ers and Rams — a Thanksgiving Eve game and another game on Christmas Day, plus exclusive rights to the NFL awards ceremony known as NFL Honors. The annual program airs Super Bowl week from the host city with MVP, Coach of the Year and other awards handed out along with the first reveal of the year’s Pro Football Hall of Fame class.
In 2025, Netflix averaged 27.5 million viewers for the Vikings-Lions game among only U.S. customers.
FOX and the National Association of Broadcasters opposed taking games off of network television. The Justice Department reportedly is checking into any violations or failed compliance with the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. NFL vice president of communications Jeff Miller said of the opposition, “I’m not sure I really understand where that comes from.”
He said the NFL remains fully committed to broadcasting games on network television. Schroeder said there is no reason the partners should be mutually exclusive.
“We think broadcast [networks] have been an incredible home,” he said. “And, now, we also know fans are increasingly spending their time on other platforms as well. They tune into broadcast for the NFL and that’s where we want to be. But we also want to be on these platforms with a limited amount of our games where we know our NFL fans are already as well.
“When we’re going onto Netflix, we’re going onto a platform that is already massively adopted and a huge number of viewers on that platform already, including a huge number of NFL fans.”
–Field Level Media
