The television rights to broadcast National Football League (NFL) games in the United States are the most lucrative and expensive rights of any sport in the world. Television brought professional football into prominence in the modern era after World War II. Since then, National Football League broadcasts have become the most-watched programs on American television.
Since the 1960s, all regular season and playoff games broadcast in the United States have been aired by national television networks. Since 1998, regionally shown regular season games on Sunday afternoons have been televised on CBS and Fox, which primarily carry games of AFC and NFC teams respectively (the conference of the away team generally determines the broadcaster of an inter-conference game). Nationally televised regular season games on Sunday and Monday nights have aired on NBC and ESPN, respectively, since 2006. ABC has also aired selected ESPN-produced regular season games since 2020. In addition, a "flexible scheduling" policy allows the league to reschedule select Sunday afternoon and Sunday night games to different time slots and/or reassign them to different networks regardless of conference in the second half of the season. Since the 2023 season, select Monday night and Thursday Night games are now also subject to flexible scheduling. During the postseason, ESPN/ABC airs two or three games, NBC airs two–four games, while CBS and Fox air the rest of the AFC and NFC games, respectively. The Super Bowl is currently rotated annually among CBS, Fox, NBC, and ABC/ESPN.
With games airing on CBS, NBC, Fox and ESPN/ABC, the NFL thus holds broadcast contracts with four companies (Paramount Skydance, NBCUniversal, Fox Corporation and The Walt Disney Company (majority ownership, with Hearst Communications and the league owning the remaining ownership of ESPN Inc.) that control a combined vast majority of the country's television product. These four broadcasters paid a combined total of US$110 billion to air games from 2023 to 2033. They previously paid a combined total of $39.6 billion to air games between 2014 and 2022.
NFL preseason telecasts are more in line with the other major sports leagues' regular-season telecasts: preseason telecasts are more locally produced, usually by a local affiliate of one of the above terrestrial television networks. Some preseason games will air nationally, however. Under the NFL's anti-siphoning rules for cable games, these stations usually will air simulcasts of ESPN and/or NFL Network games in their local markets if the local team is playing.
Overview of schedule
The NFL regular season begins in the second weekend in September (the weekend after Labor Day in the United States) and ends in mid-January. Each team plays 17 games during an 18-week period. Typically, the majority of each week's games are played on Sunday afternoon. The Sunday afternoon games are televised regionally, where the particular game available on local television will depend on where the viewer is located, and begin at either 1:00 p.m., 4:05 p.m., or 4:25 p.m. Eastern Time. In addition, there are usually single nationally televised games each on Thursday night, Sunday night, and Monday night (most weeks). These primetime games are broadcast across the country over one national over-the-air broadcast, cable network (or one broadcast and one cable network for MNF Split DH), or streaming service, where there are no regional restrictions, nor any other competing NFL contest.
All playoff games, the Super Bowl and the Pro Bowl are held on either Saturday, Sunday or Monday in January and February, and in either the afternoon or primetime. These are also treated like primetime regular season games, televised across the country over a national network or streaming service with no regional restrictions or any other competing NFL game.
Scheduling during the NFL preseason is more lenient in that most games usually start based on local time. Thus, games on the West Coast are usually played after 7:00 p.m. Pacific Time (10:00 p.m. Eastern Time). However, the handful of primetime, nationally televised preseason games are still played at approximately 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
Current broadcasting contracts Annual NFL Broadcast Revenue (U.S. dollars) Broadcast Partner Contract Term Annual Value Ref The Walt Disney Company (including ABC, ESPN, NFL Network and ESPN DTC) 2022–33 $2.7 billion Alphabet Inc. and Google (including YouTube (application and website) and YouTube TV) 2023–29 $2 billion NFL Network (now part of The Walt Disney Company including ABC, ESPN and ESPN DTC) 2025–32 $1.3 billion Fox Corporation (including Fox, FS1 and Fox One) 2023–33 $2.2 billion Paramount Skydance (including CBS, Nickelodeon and Paramount+) 2023–33 $2.1 billion Comcast (including NBC and Peacock) 2023–33 $2 billion Amazon (including Prime Video and Twitch) 2022–33 $1 billion Cumulus Media (including Westwood One Radio) 2022–present TBA Netflix2026–29TBA
The television rights to the NFL are the most expensive rights of not only any American sport, but any American entertainment property.
The Super Bowl is typically the most watched television broadcast of the year. Four of Nielsen Media Research's top 10 programs of all time are Super Bowls. Networks have purchased a share of the broadcasting rights to the NFL as a means of raising the entire network's profile.
The NFL distributes television revenue (as well as all revenue from League sponsorship and licensing deals, and 34% of all gate receipts) to all teams equally, regardless of performance. each team receives $255 million annually from the league's television contracts, up 150% from $99.9 million in 2010. Under the current television contracts, which began during the 2022 season, regular season games are broadcast on seven networks: Prime Video, CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN/ABC and the NFL Network. As of July 2023 national media revenue made up around 67% of the league's total football-related revenue according to Forbes.
Since the 2012 NFL season, the major networks have invested more in audio description due to FCC guidelines ramping up the requirements of opening up the second audio program audio channel to access audio description, which is also used by some networks to provide Spanish language audio of their primetime programming. Therefore, all of the NFL's broadcasting partners have added Spanish language audio commentary of games, either through a separate channel or over the SAP channel.
ESPN simulcasts Monday Night Football with Spanish-language commentary and graphics over ESPN Deportes and has since the move of MNF to ESPN in 2006, though its ABC simulcasts of games do carry the ESPN Deportes commentary over SAP on ABC. In 2017 and 2018, the Spanish-language coverage was also simulcast on ESPN2 during the first two months of the season. In the 2020-21 playoffs and every playoffs since, ESPN Deportes also aired an AFC Divisional Playoff game and the AFC Championship Game.ESPN Deportes nabs Spanish-language rights to Super Bowl, AFC Championship in 2021 - Joe Lucia, Awful Announcing, October 12, 2020
NBC's sister Spanish-language cable network mun2 (which rebranded as Universo in 2015) began to simulcast select Sunday Night Football games in the 2014 season as part of the new television contract, while its Spanish-language counterpart Telemundo Deportes provides the branding for NBC's SAP Spanish commentary.
Fox's Spanish-language sports network Fox Deportes began broadcasting select Fox games, including the playoffs and Super Bowl XLVIII in Spanish during the 2013 season. Super Bowl LI for Fox featured Spanish audio exclusive to Fox Deportes, without a SAP component over-the-air.
CBS, which lacked any Spanish language outlets prior to the 2019 remerger (Trés is legally part of the family, but is a cable channel), still uses solely SAP for its Spanish simulcasts. It relied on ESPN Deportes to simulcast Super Bowl 50, LIII and LV in Spanish, though it still carried Spanish SAP audio on the CBS broadcast of the game.
NFL finished new contract negotiations for its media rights deals for $110 billion over 11 years on March 18, 2021. In the new contracts, ABC became eligible to air the Super Bowl for the first time since Super Bowl XL in 2006. Since the 2023 NFL Season, ESPN/ABC has televised a wild-card game and a divisional playoff game, and flexible scheduling was added to Monday Night Football for Week 12 and beyond.
In 2022, Amazon Prime Video became the first streaming service to own full rights over a package of NFL games when it became the new home for Thursday Night Football.
In 2024, Netflix initially signed a three-year deal to exclusively two Christmas games. In 2026, Netflix signed a four-year extension to its original three-year deal, adding more games to its schedule.
2026 also saw ESPN acquire NFL Network, television distribution rights to NFL RedZone and the RedZone brand. In exchange, the league received a 10 percent equity stake in ESPN.
These current deals have an opt-out clause after the 2029 season, with the exception for ESPN/ABC's contract, whose opt-out clause is after the 2030 season.
In September 2026, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the league was evaluating whether to repackage its existing media-rights packages in response to changes in how fans consume games, including the growth of streaming. The NFL has an option to revisit its current packages after the 2029-30 season.
Sunday regional games
AFC and NFC packages In 1970, the regional Sunday games (1 p.m. "early" and 4:05/4:25 p.m. "late" games Eastern time) were split into AFC and NFC packages. Each package was held by a single network: CBS had held the AFC package since 1998, and Fox had held the NFC package since 1994. These packages included Sunday afternoon games during each week of the regular season, a single game for each network on Thanksgiving, wild card playoff games, divisional playoff games, and the respective conference championship game for each network.
Starting in 2023, the league introduced greater scheduling flexibility, including cross-flexing regular season games between CBS and Fox and new protection rules for key matchups. As a result, Sunday afternoon games in both time slots are no longer allotted to a single network by conference affiliation, and the distribution of "high profile" games between CBS and Fox has become more or less balanced.
Classification as A, B, or C games The Sunday games are classified as "A", "B", or "C" games. "A" games are usually the primary game for each network (1:00 ET for Eastern and Central time zone or 4:05 ET for Mountain and Pacific time zone games in a single-game week), and if the network has a doubleheader, is typically the 4:25 ET game. "B" games are typically the primary 1:00 ET game when the network has a doubleheader, or the secondary game if the network has a single game. "C" games are only shown in the participating teams' markets, and in some cases, markets where the game may be of interest to a local audience (due to playoff implications, rivalries, or a locally popular player/coach).