Watching sports has been a popular pastime in America for the better part of 100 years. In recent years, however, watching live sports is not as accessible as it once was.
According to the NFL, 44.2 million people tuned in for the 2025 NFC Championship game, this was the least-watched NFL title game since 2020. This game was accessible through FOX and FOX only. The NFC Championship game is considered the second biggest game of the season and decides who is going to the Superbowl for the NFC, and only letting one network show it is unfair to fans.
Streaming services are expensive and it is not unusual for people to be subscribed to three or four streaming services. According to Yahoo Finance, Americans spend an average of $75 a month on streaming services.
The NFL as a whole plays 272 regular season games played in an 18-week time. The NFL plays games on Thursday, Sunday and Monday. Thursday night games are exclusively on Amazon Prime and are on no other streaming services. This is due to a deal in March of 2021 that saw Amazon pay the NFL a billion dollars annually to exclusively carry a package of NFL games. Monday night games are exclusively on ESPN. However, an ESPN+ subscription does not carry these games, and you will need a separate live-streaming service that carries ESPN, such as YouTube TV, to be able to access these Monday games. ESPN+, Netflix and Peacock all carry certain NFL games, and even all have exclusive rights to random NFL games.
Sunday games are a whole different story. The best way to watch every Sunday afternoon game is to own YouTube TV and also purchase YouTube TV’s NFL Sunday Ticket. This subscription will allow people to watch all Sunday afternoon games during the regular season aside from certain exclusives. However, this subscription costs a total of $670.96 for the whole NFL season. And this is just for the normal package, as another $10.99 gets people NFL Redzone as well.
As a whole, paying for all these packages is just too much to ask for the average fan. Eric Tanko, a junior at Wadsworth High School, believes that this is overpriced.
“I think plans around ten dollars are reasonable, but those usually have the bare minimum,” Tanko said.
An easy way to make this more accessible would be to allow home teams to stream all of their home games and primetime games on the major networks such as CBS, FOX, and NBC. This would allow the average fan to be able to watch their hometown team for the price of one streaming service. Preston Wilson, a junior at Wadsworth High School, believes home games should be streamed.
“If it’s a home game you should be able to watch it,” Wilson said.
Basketball and the NBA are in a similar spot as the NFL. The NBA streams the majority of its games on FuboTV, YouTube TV and other streaming services with ESPN. However, some of these games are exclusively on the NBA’s League Pass.
“It’s stupid when there is a home Cavaliers game and it’s locked behind a paywall,” Wilson said.
Another way the major sports leagues could make watching their games more affordable and accessible is by allowing smaller, local channels to stream the games.
“I would prefer the games to be broadcasted on local channels instead of streaming services, like how they do it for radio,” Tanko said.
Sadly, with major corporations offering upwards of a billion dollars just to get 16 exclusive games, it is unlikely that the NFL would support small local channels by giving them any.
No matter what, something has to change. Watching sports is something that brings people together and is a way for people to unwind and have a good time. However, the average person can’t justify paying these outrageous prices for multiple streaming services just to watch something that only happens a couple of times a week.
As a whole, the exclusivity of these major contracts needs to come to an end and more local channels need to be offered more games for the major sports leagues.
