The deal
American football's top-tier NFL will be covered in the UK during the upcoming 2025 season by a combination of pay-TV heavyweight Sky and commercial free-to-air (FTA) broadcaster Channel 5 (owned by media giant Paramount Global).
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The latter multi-year tie-up, unveiled late last month, means weekly FTA coverage of live NFL action will return to the UK for the first time in 20 years, while the Sky agreement (three years) is the latest extension of a long-standing relationship that has stood for over 30 years.
Both deals were announced during the final days of build-up to the 2025 NFL season getting underway, with the opening game between the Philadelphia Eagles (last season's Super Bowl winners) and the Dallas Cowboys having taken place late yesterday (September 4).
Why it matters
The UK is now a major market for the NFL, with the sport's popularity having soared there over the last 15 years or so.
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By GlobalDataIt now hosts at least two regular-season games each year, all in London, and these usually sell out, while general awareness of the sport in the UK has increased exponentially in recent years.
The NFL's UK general manager, having been in that position since July 2022, is Henry Hodgson, and he has now sat down with Sportcal (GlobalData Sport) to discuss the logic behind these two deals.
He starts by explaining that the balance between pay-TV and FTA coverage in the UK "hasn't been there for the last few years – in fact, for quite a long time."
He adds: "For any sport that's looking to grow and become successful, you want it to be as available and accessible as possible.
"Obviously, we've had a fantastic partnership with Sky over the last 30 years, and I think that serves fans incredibly well if they're already subscribers to that platform. But, we've also been under-serving potential fans – it's hard to recruit new people to become supporters if we don't find a way of getting the action onto FTA."
He continues: "We've had some great partnerships with the BBC and lastly with ITV for highlights, but I think we wanted to show the excitement of games [live].
"So, the opportunity with 5 was something we really started to lean into."
In terms of the league's overall popularity in the UK, Hodgson says: "We see growth in fandom – the number of avid fans is growing, as is viewership engagement, as well as engagement on social media channels.
"So the sport is in a very healthy position in the UK, but obviously, clearly has a lot of room for growth as well. And that's really what we were trying to bring on in this deal cycle – how do we reach more people? How do we get to more people?
"It's all about introducing the sport to more people, as well as serving and super-serving the existing audience."
The details
Specifically, Comcast-owned Sky has retained the first-pick exclusive game on Sunday at 6pm (UK time) live, and the first pick for the Sunday 9pm game, and has also gained three additional games – a second Sunday 6pm game and two games during the Sunday 9pm slot.
The additional games will be shown live concurrently alongside the first pick.
As part of the renewal, Sky has also secured rights to show all NFL regular-season international games being staged in London (UK) and Europe, including inaugural games in Ireland (Dublin) and Spain (Madrid), as well as its popular Germany stop (Berlin).
The current deal through which Sky shows the NFL was struck in mid-2020.
Channel 5, meanwhile, will have two Sunday evening fixtures per week throughout the regular season via its new NFL: Big Game Night show, which looks to blend its coverage with entertainment segments.
During the previous UK rights cycle, fellow commercial FTA network ITV had a partnership in place with the American football property.
Now, Channel 5 has tied up with production company Hungry Bear Media to produce studio content around the games, centered on the Sunday 6pm kick-off, which it wants to use to attract a “family audience”. Other Paramount-owned brands, such as the children’s entertainment channel Nickelodeon, will also support that broadcast, while a nationwide advertising campaign will be put in place.
On this game, Hodgson states: "I don't think it's intended to be the show for our avid audience. That's not what we're looking to do. I would welcome avid NFL fans who want to bring in their partner, their kids, and their friends who aren't NFL fans.
"I think it'd be a fantastic opportunity for them to do that in a way that can be fun and they can help explain the sport – but if you are an avid NFL fan who wants to sit down and watch the game and get analysis of the defense and breakdowns of how the running game is going, this probably isn't going to be the show for you.
"We've also worked with Hungry Bear, a production company that's really well known for creating fantastic entertainment programs to find a way in a format, to make an NFL game into an entertainment product in general.
"The Channel Five broadcast of the 6pm game is going to be a very different broadcast to anything that we've seen from an NFL standpoint, and probably to any sports [broadcast] in the UK before – it is the NFL game, but wrapped around it is a games show. So – it will be different, it's intended to be different."
The Channel 5 slate will also include this year's NFL international games set to be held in London and Dublin in 2025. These games are disseminated by US rightsholder CBS Sports, owned by Paramount, which has facilitated the partnership.
Additionally, Channel 5 will also air three of the league’s annual post-season playoff games and the season-ending Super Bowl, ensuring that the sport’s biggest showcase, a major TV draw in the UK, remains on free-to-air TV.
Summing up, Hodgson explains that the two partners "both serve different audiences. One is a free-to-air partner that is making the sport much more accessible with a different type of show, and the other – Sky – is [bringing in] a more established sport audience that's already on Sky Sports.
"Sky's focus is the game itself and serving both existing NFL fans, and other sports fans who are looking for what's next on TV after a Premier League [soccer] game on a Sunday, for example."
