Streaming giant Netflix will broadcast an expanded slate of NFL games after agreeing a renewed four-year deal with the top American football league.
Under the extension, which runs through the 2029-2030 season, Netflix will stream a week one game, a Thanksgiving Eve match-up, one Christmas Day game, a week 18 regular season finale game, and the NFL Honors annual awards event.
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The platform will air five NFL games this year, beginning with the NFL’s first-ever regular-season fixture in Australia on September 10.
The game between divisional rivals, the Los Angeles Rams and the San Francisco 49ers, from the Melbourne Cricket Ground, will take place during the opening week of the season.
The streaming service will then add the NFL’s first-ever Thanksgiving Eve game on November 25 to its offering, with the Green Bay Packers visiting the Los Angeles Rams at SoFi Stadium.
This will be followed by Netflix’s Christmas Day coverage, with two games to be shown on the holiday.
Netflix has broadcast the league’s Christmas Day games exclusively since the 2024 season under a three-year agreement that was due to expire at the end of the upcoming 2026 campaign.
Last year, the platform’s Christmas Day broadcast of the Detroit Lions versus the Minnesota Vikings was the most-streamed NFL regular season game in US history, drawing an average of 27.5 million viewers.
As part of its new deal, Netflix will additionally show a week 18 game on January 9, the final weekend of the regular season.
Netflix claims its NFL games in 2026 will be available in over 200 countries around the world. These games will also be available on local, over-the-air broadcast television in the respective team markets.
The streamer’s NFL content will also include the Quarterback documentary series and other original programming.
For the upcoming season, national networks Fox, NBC, and CBS will also get additional games on their schedule.
The NFL awarded the major broadcasters one game each out of the four windows Disney-owned ESPN relinquished as part of its deal to acquire NFL Network.
Fox’s will show the week 10 international fixture from Munich, which will be part of a triple-header on the network – the first NFL tripleheader on a single broadcast network since 2016 – and a Saturday game in week 15.
NBC announced on Monday that its additional inventory would be a Saturday game in week 17, leading into its annual Peacock-exclusive game, giving the company three exclusive windows that week.
CBS’s additional game window will air on the Saturday of week 15, creating a split-network doubleheader with Fox on December 19.
The league is also expected to convert one regionally distributed game each on Fox and CBS to a national window. This will ultimately result in four additional national windows on broadcast television using a mix of new and existing inventory.
The four ex-ESPN windows were originally expected to form the bulk of a new five-game media rights package — also including the league’s new International Series game from Australia — that the league had been reportedly shopping throughout the offseason.
At some point in the process, the NFL is said to have shifted from shopping a single five-game package to splitting that inventory between Netflix and Google-owned YouTube.
US outlet Puck reported last week that YouTube was not interested in that arrangement, and the two games it would have received were instead shopped to the traditional linear broadcasters. Netflix has now picked up the extra two games to form a five-game package.
As well as ESPN/ABC, Fox, NBC, and CBS, domestic NFL coverage is provided by the Amazon Prime Video service, which holds Thursday Night Football streaming rights.
The deals began at the start of the 2023 season and run through 2033 – the combined agreements are reportedly valued at $111 billion in total.
