Why NFL+ Isn’t Part of Football’s Streaming Wars

As the NFL dives deeper into exclusively streamed game broadcasts, the league is holding back on adding its own service to the party.

Beginning with Friday night’s Packers-Eagles contest in Brazil on Peacock, a record four platforms will exclusively stream NFL games this season, including Amazon Prime Video, ESPN+, and Netflix—but not NFL+, the league-owned subscription service available on smartphones and tablets that is entering its third season since launching in 2022.

Fans can watch local and prime-time games on NFL+, as well as NFL RedZone, and programming on NFL Network, which has seven exclusive game broadcasts this season. In a world where Netflix can acquire Christmas Day games during the league’s $110 billion media-rights deals with CBS, Fox, ESPN, NBC, and Amazon, would it really be shocking if the league decides to turn an NFL Network game into an NFL+ game one season?

NFL VP and head of business strategy Gil Moran tells Front Office Sports that the league isn’t looking to disrupt its live-game partners, but admits that media strategy is always fluid. “We are constantly looking and evaluating how NFL+ can be a better product,” Moran says. “And as things come up—and even if rights come up—we can evaluate that. But currently, I think we’re all pretty happy with how things are with our partners and the rest of the ecosystem.”

Moran’s comments echo ones made earlier this year by NFL EVP of media distribution Hans Schroeder, who said the league likes to “keep some of our inventory to deploy strategically.” 

Moving the Chains

NFL+ is “well into the millions of subscribers,” Moran says, and adds that it ended the preseason with more paid users than it had entering the previous two regular seasons. 

There was no price increase this season, after a major hike between Years 1 and 2. Last fall, the monthly cost of the base version of NFL+ jumped 40% to $6.99, and 50% to $14.99 for the premium version. The service’s big addition this season is NFL Pro, which combines All-22 coaches’ film—popular among football diehards—and Next Gen Stats.