The NFL and The Athletic have formalized a content partnership ahead of this upcoming football season.
Front Office Sports first reported in August that the sides were in talks.
As of Wednesday afternoon, there are several stories from the New York Times-owned sports outlet populated on NFL.com’s headline bar. When clicking into the stories, a paywall emerges for the NFL+ subscription platform, which has various tiers that can include mobile streaming for every NFL game that airs on local Fox and CBS affiliates, as well as all standalone games (including ones on ESPN, NBC, Amazon’s Prime Video, and Netflix), and NFL RedZone.
Spokespeople for the NFL and The Athletic did not immediately respond to a request for comment about further details involving the mechanics of the new partnership.
The Athletic quietly also agreed to a similar arrangement for its stories to appear on NBA.com.
NFL Media—the league’s content arm—is bolstering its offerings after selling NFL Network to ESPN. FOS previously reported that Andrew Siciliano, Colleen Wolfe, and Michael Yam are returning to NFL Media and popular creators Trevor Sikkema and Brett Kollmann are also joining. NFL Media announced earlier Wednesday that former quarterback Cody Kessler and wide receiver Nelson Agholor are also hopping aboard as analysts.
