The National Football League is taking it on the chin on social media just before its upcoming season, because of all the subscriptions you'll need to watch the nationally televised games. Add onto that cost if you are interested in watching your local games and you're probably going to pay hundreds of dollars this season to watch.
ESPN and national television networks, like FOX, CBS, NBC and ABC usually were the only places to catch the nationally televised games. Now, on Thursday nights, Amazon Prime airs those games. Later in the season, there are games on Peacock, NBC's streaming service, and even Netflix.
If you add up paying for cable, Amazon Prime, Peacock and Netflix, you'll need to fork over hundreds of dollars a month to keep up with all the live NFL action.
If you just take the Amazon Prime membership, you're in for more than $130 a month. However, the way around the full Prime membership to watch Thursday night games, the "video-only" membership for Prime is $8.99 a month. Which adds up to $36 for Thursday night games. If you had a cable subscription before 2023, those games came with NBC Network access.
Peacock is around $80 a year, but you can pay $7.99 a month just for the NFL season to watch the games television on that streaming service.
ESPN + is about $11 a month and $110 per year, so you'll need to pay for that to watch NFL games on Monday night.
Standard cable or satellite with the sports package varies from about $70 a month to up to $200 a month for access to the major networks so you can watch your locally and nationally televised games.
NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube, without the discount, is $480, leaving fans who usually want to watch out-of-market local games, shelling out serious cash to catch their favorite squads live.
The final option to watch games is over the air with a receiver. It's a free option and you'll get your locally available channels, which are usually the major networks in your area. For example: if where you live has a local NBC and a local CBS station, you can probably watch Sunday Night Football, and your local AFC games.