Mike Florio and Chris Simms.
Credit: Pro Football Talk
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Mike Florio is sick and tired of NFL “bonus coverage” leaving fans that have paid good money to be able to watch every football game unable to tune in to watch their favorite team.
The Sunday Ticket blackouts became an issue on Sunday when the game between the Washington Commanders and New York Giants ran long, leaving Fox stations in the New York and Washington areas to miss the start of the Game of the Week between the San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Seahawks.
“This whole ‘bonus coverage’ thing keeps people from seeing all of the key game in the late afternoon window,” Florio said on his show on Monday. “It specifically keeps people who bought Sunday Ticket — this is what’s amazing to me, because I’ve got Sunday Ticket. I’ve got Sunday Ticket primarily so I can go to the DVR on YouTube TV whenever I want and watch all of the games throughout the week. So, alright, 49ers-Seahawks let’s go. ‘Wait, where’s the rest of it? It’s 4:47 left in the first quarter. Where’s the game?'”
Florio argued that there had to be a way for the NFL to allow its most dedicated fans — those that put up the $400 necessary to watch their favorite team every week if they play in a different city — to watch the games they paid to see.
“This is 2026 the last I checked. We’ve got artificial, we’ve got super intelligence. There has to be a way to lift the blackout, so that people who have paid their $400 because they have no choice but to pay for the whole season, to watch all of the games that aren’t on in their market.
“If there’s a game that’s happening that’s not on in their market, then they should be able to watch the first 10-plus minutes of the first quarter on Sunday Ticket. And I know the NFL’s got plenty of stuff going on as it relates to antitrust challenges directed at Sunday Ticket. This is another one waiting to happen. I paid my $400. Why can’t I watch the first 10 minutes of Seahawks-49ers? We don’t know what’s going to happen in those first 10 minutes. It could have been the greatest first 10 minutes of a game in NFL history, and you’d never get to see it. It’s inexplicable that this would happen.”
“Bonus coverage” is anything but a bonus for people who have paid for Sunday Ticket, when it keeps them from seeing a significant 4:25 p.m. ET game from the opening kickoff. https://t.co/Vruk0M8KKi
— PFT Live (@PFT_Live) October 12, 2026
It’s worth noting that for the majority of fans in the local area, keeping the Giants-Commanders game on television is the preferable outcome. While 49ers vs. Seahawks is undeniably a better game, local fans with rooting interests in the Giants or Commanders would be furious if Fox cut away from overtime to show kickoff of a game on the West coast.
But for fans of the 49ers and Seahawks living in markets where the early game ran long, even those that ponied up the money to buy NFL Sunday Ticket to make sure they could watch their favorite team when playing out of market, there was no recourse to see the start of the late game, because the 49ers-Seahawks game was technically available locally, and thus unavailable on Sunday Ticket. But as Florio explained, if the game is “available locally” but not actually on television, it’s still blacked out.
The NFL already asks a lot of its fans to follow the sport, with subscriptions to Prime Video and Netflix necessary on top of either cable or Sunday Ticket to watch the action every week. The fact that it’s the fans most committed to the sport that are getting the bad end of the deal on Sunday Ticket only rubs salt in the wound.