The NFL season kicks off Wednesday and football fans across the country are getting ready for the ups and downs their teams face on the road to February’s Super Bowl.
Streaming the league can be an expensive proposition for many consumers already feeling financial pressure. Some 40 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, an April study from financial data and news site PYMNTS found, with little wiggle room.
With that in mind, finding value is an important part of an NFL fan’s in-season experience.
Streaming services offer a way to catch NFL action Sundays, Mondays and Thursdays, and late-season Saturday games. Their monthly prices typically range from $6.99 to $89.99, with some offering new-customer discounts.
Ideally, fans could patch together free trials and local broadcasts of games, but that’s a nearly impossible task, said Mark Vena, CEO of advisory firm SmartTech Research.
“As much as many consumers would like to do this, it’s almost impossible to survive an entire 18-week season on free trials alone,” Vena told The Independent in an email.
“Keep track of cancellation dates across half a dozen services, cycle through different emails, and you’ll quickly realize a clever money-saving hack has morphed into an administrative nightmare.”
The following four streaming services offer the three cheapest ways to watch local games and the cheapest way to watch games across all major networks.
NFL Network’s NFL+
- Cost: $6.99 a month/$39.99 a year
- Games: Local/regional, Sunday/Monday/Thursday Night Football
- Devices: Phones and tablets only.
The NFL Network is a league-sponsored streaming platform offering live streams of certain NFL games, live audio and ad-free highlights, according to the league.
NFL+ is limited, though - it streams live local or regional early and late Sunday games, along with Sunday, Monday and Thursday Night Football. “Out-of-market” games, which refers to games in other cities in states, are not available.
Aside from its limited slate of games, NFL+’s main drawback is that its game streams are limited to phones and tablets.
Paramount+ Essential
- Cost: $8.99 a month/$89.99 a year
- Games: Local/regional CBS streams, featured CBS matchups
- Devices: Phones, tablets and TVs.
Paramount+ Essential package is a basic streaming service that provides local and regional live streams of AFC matchups. Subscribers also get access to featured games that may not be in their local or regional markets.
The package’s main drawback is that it only offers games on CBS - subscribers will miss out on Sunday games from ABC and FOX, and Sunday, Monday and Thursday Night Football.
Subscribers can pay $13.99 a month to get premium streaming quality (4K UHD, Dolby Vision/HDR 10) while they watch NFL matchups.
Fox ONE
- Cost: $19.99 a month/$99 a year
- Games: Local/regional CBS streams, featured CBS matchups
- Devices: Phones, tablets and TVs.
Fox’s ONE streaming platform gives viewers access to local and regional games broadcast by Fox, plus the platform’s “America’s Game of the Week,” which is a top-tier matchup among games starting at 4:05 or 4:25 p.m. EST on Sundays.
The service is limited, though, as FOX only broadcasts games of local or regional home teams in the NFC. So, there are weeks during the season that subscribers have no access to games and will have to look elsewhere for NFL streams.
For $39.99 a month, subscribers can add ESPN to their package to get Monday Night Football games.
YouTube TV Sports Plan
- Cost: $44.99 a month for six months, $64.99 after
- Games: All game streams from ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, ESPN and the NFL Network
- Devices: Phones, tablets and TVs.
YouTube TV’s Sports plan is the cheapest streaming platform for fans who want to catch live streams of all games in local and regional markets plus Sunday and Monday Night Football. It provides streams of games on ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, ESPN and the NFL Network.
That access comes at a cost, though - at $44.99, it’s more than twice as much as Fox ONE and almost seven times more expensive than NFL+ Essential. This is the service's main drawback and may not be a good fit for households on a shoestring budget.
Users who want live streams for all NFL games can add YouTube’s NFL Sunday Ticket for $30 a month for 8 months.
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