For The First Time Ever, The NFL Will Stream An Exclusive Game For FREE, & That’s How The Streaming Era Should Be Going

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

If you’re an NFL fan, you know how hard it can be to keep up with all of the different channels and subscriptions you need to watch every game.

Sometimes the game is exclusively on NBC. Other times, you need a subscription to Peacock to watch the action. On occasion, you must be paying for DiYo or Feeboo-Plus to watch your favorite team compete out on the gridiron (okay, I made those last two up). In short, the days of paying for cable television and being able to watch all the games you could want are long gone.

A good, sports-minded samaritan went ahead and gathered together all of the things you need access to if you’re an NFL fan looking to watch all of the biggest regular season and postseason NFL games, and it’s a pretty hefty list:

As he pointed out, that list doesn’t even include NFL Sunday Ticket – or NFL Redzone – and I consider both of those to be essential as a massive, borderline obsessive NFL fan.

This modern age of streaming can feel a little exhausting at times. Sometimes I dramatically look out the window and think about how things used to be so simple, when we all just paid for cable or satellite TV and maybe had Netflix or Hulu as a supplement. And then almost every show or movie you could think of were on one of those two streaming services… before every brand broke off and created their own streamer (I’m looking right at you Disney+).

But allow me to lessen the streaming service weight that’s currently on your shoulders – or at the very least be the deliverer of good news. Today, the NFL announced they would be taking one of their Week 1 contests exclusively to an online streaming option. No need to groan, or go pull out your credit card though.

The National Football League’s special, Friday night game on September 5 – coming to fans all around the world live from São Paulo, Brazil – will stream on YouTube. Not YouTube TV… YouTube (that’s an important-yet-confusing clarification for those that are technologically challenged).

Basically, that means that the game will be free to watch, as the rest of YouTube’s content is. And it marks the first time that an NFL game, in its entirety, will be streamed live at no cost to the consumer:

Now THAT is how this streaming era should be going.

As more and more content goes to online streaming, and I’m forced to dip deeper and deeper into my savings account to keep up with all of my favorite shows and events, the least the billion (with a “b”) dollar machine known as the NFL can do is give us all a break and stream one game for free.

Nowadays, with all the ads that are sneaking into streaming services, I feel like more and more of it should come at no extra cost anyways. We’re quite literally just morphing back into the cable TV era, and paying a ton more for it. So NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell… if you are reading this, good on you for airing a game for free on YouTube.

All I hear from the higher ups in the sports world is how much they want to “grow the game.” It seems to be like the NFL is one of the first leagues to put their money where their mouth is with that, because there is no bigger source of content for the younger generation than YouTube. If you want to grow the game, make it more readily and easily available (and get rid of blackouts while you are at it).

And just think… one free NFL game on YouTube could lead to a lifetime of fandom for some kid that accidentally stumbled upon the football contest while looking for the latest Mr. Beast video.