With Fox and ESPN planning to launch their own direct-to-consumer platforms, it likely means the end to NFL games made “exclusively available on linear TV,” according to Tyler Aquilina of VARIETY. All the NFL’s distribution partners will now -- “for the first time ever -- offer their coverage outside of traditional TV, to viewers without a pay TV subscription.” Fox announced that it will launch a standalone subscription streaming service by the end of 2025 along with ESPN’s forthcoming platform, known as “Flagship.” While CBS’ Sunday afternoon games have streamed via Paramount+ for years now, they are “only available to streaming viewers in the teams’ local markets,” just as on linear TV. Fox’s DTC product will “presumably follow the same model, so as not to compete with the league’s Sunday Ticket subscription offering.” Nonetheless, this development is a “major milestone in the history of televised sports and in the ongoing decline of the traditional pay TV ecosystem.” In 2029, the year the NFL can “opt out of current contracts with all TV partners except Disney,” that year is “already looming like a pitch-black storm cloud for legacy media.” Current linear audience numbers “may suggest the league won’t do so, but four years is plenty of time for viewership to shift decisively toward streaming, and the past four years have certainly proven the media landscape can be reshaped practically overnight” (VARIETY, 2/20).
Fox, ESPN DTC service plans mean all NFL game content to be available digitally
