It’s the statistic the NFL reaches for whenever it wants to demonstrate its unmatched accessibility, but the claim that 87% of the league’s games are available via free, over-the-air TV can be misleading when viewed from the perspective of the average fan.
While it is factually accurate to state that 87% of the NFL’s games can be viewed on broadcast television, as 237 of the 272 regular-season contests aired last season across various CBS, Fox, NBC and ABC windows, the bulk of those OTA productions are out of reach for consumers who don’t subscribe to NFL Sunday Ticket. Given the in-market restrictions that govern the distribution of the Sunday afternoon games on CBS and Fox, the share of NFL games that are actually available via free TV is closer to 33%.
It breaks down like this: While each of the 198 Sunday afternoon games that air in the CBS/Fox regional windows is technically available on no-fee linear TV, fans are limited to three of these afternoon contests per week. During the 2025-26 season, most markets had access to 54 of the games in the Sunday 1 p.m. and 4:20 p.m. ET windows, which works out to a little over a quarter (27%) of the total 198-game slate.
While the NFL did not challenge the percentage of its 272 games to which individual fans have access via free TV (33%), a league rep emphasized that 100% of any given team’s games may be seen in its home markets without a pay subscription.
Toss in NBC’s 20 Sunday Night Football dates and the 15 Monday Night Football games that aired in standalone windows (or were simulcast) on ABC, and the number of free NFL broadcasts that were accessible without a supplementary out-of-market viewing package gets whittled down to 89. And while 33% is proportionately generous compared to other top-tier U.S. sports leagues—with nine of their 124 remaining games set to air on a broadcast network this season, the Yankees are a rare treat for fans who don’t subscribe to a pay-TV package (or MLB.TV/ESPN Unlimited/Apple TV+/Prime Video)—it’s obviously not in the same ballpark of that oft-stated 87% allotment.
From an absolutist perspective, there’s no question that NFL games largely remain untethered by any sort of paywall. In Week 1 of last season, 15 of the 16 games aired on a free TV channel, while YouTube’s Friday night Chiefs-Chargers clash from Rio streamed at no additional charge. But for the Christmas-week slate, when six of the 16 games were distributed via a premium platform, the league adheres closely to that 87% free model.
All of which is well and good, but the big-picture statistical veracity starts to look a little shabby in the face of the actual end-user experience. Much of that has to do with the busy 1 p.m. ET windows, which are doing much of the heavy lifting in the “87%” calculus. Last season, 131 games aired on CBS and Fox in the early afternoon slot, and every single one of those games was available at no additional cost for anyone with a TV set and a pair of rabbit ears. But since the 1 p.m. games are highly regionalized (when color-coded against Nielsen’s 210 local TV markets, the map of Fox’s Week 1 schedule resembled a Jackson Pollock painting), the intimation of unfettered access takes on a dubious cast.
Because again, unless you subscribe to Sunday Ticket, you can’t just pluck all those free signals from out of the ether. Say you’re a Colts fan living in New York, and you were hoping to catch Indy’s opener against the Dolphins on Sept. 7. If you turned on CBS at 1 p.m., you (like 85% of the country) would have been greeted by the sights and sounds of the new Ian Eagle-J.J. Watt battery. That’s because fans in the New York DMA were served up their local AFC reps, the Jets, who hosted Aaron Rodgers and the Steelers.
In fact, as much as it’s true enough that Miami-Indy aired for free on various CBS affiliates, the only fans who could pick up the signal were situated in Indiana and Florida … as well as certain markets in eastern Illinois and a smudge of northern Kentucky. All told, only 10% of U.S. TV homes were able to watch the Colts stuff the Dolphins into a bunch of tuna cans, as distribution of Indy’s 33-8 win was limited to the local and adjacent markets for each team.
Prior to the launch of Sunday Ticket in 1994, a Colts fan marooned in Gotham would have no recourse but to head out to a sports bar. The out-of-market package has been a godsend for transplants, although it’s anything but free. (YouTube’s pricing scheme is far too byzantine to dissect here, but the fee to access every game in the Sunday afternoon windows last season ranged from $85 to $155 per month.)
As part of the deck it sent to Marlene Dortch of the Federal Communications Commission on April 21, the NFL declared that it “strive[s] to put its fans at the center of everything we do.” On page 4 of the presentation, the league reiterates that 100% of its local market games are free over-the-air before noting that “87% of NFL games’ primary distribution is on broadcast [TV].”
All true, but given the reality of the user-level experience and considering the fact that these highlighted stats are couched under the heading “NFL Distribution Approach: Good for Fans,” the framing is rather self-flattering.
Unless you’ve successfully tampered with the time-space continuum and figured out a way to be in multiple places at once, at a practical level, the majority of NFL games are not available for free via the legacy TV networks. For complete access, fans must pay for one or more subscription service.
Going back to 1987, when the NFL inked its very first cable deal with ESPN, the league has generated some $73 billion in fees by putting a selection of its games behind paywalls. In recent years, Amazon’s assumption of the Thursday Night Football package and exploratory nibbles from the likes of YouTube have poured billions of bonus bucks into the league’s coffers. And as marketplace dynamics rapidly evolve, the shift from legacy TV to streaming platforms will only accelerate.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is doing his bit to try to keep the FCC from disrupting the league’s outsized earnings power—in February, the commission began probing how allocating more and more games to streaming has impacted the wallets and pocketbooks of American sports fans—but the “87%” claim may not hold up to scrutiny. In a surprise move, Goodell popped up in a Vanity Fair profile that was published earlier this week, and in the course of his conversations with the magazine he reached for a somewhat padded version of the inevitable talking point.
“Well … 88% of our games, roughly, are on broadcast television,” Goodell said. “The other 12% are on platforms that are incredibly widely distributed and people are already there. Netflix is not a small distribution. In fact, you can make an argument it’s bigger than some of the networks.”
Netflix also costs anywhere from $8.99 to $26.99 per month. Just because a segment of the audience is “already there,” doesn’t make it free. Meanwhile, Netflix and YouTube are said to be jostling for the a few of the games the league reabsorbed following ESPN’s acquisition of NFL Network, and with the NFL schedule set to be released on Thursday night, an agreement is expected to be reached within the next few days.
It’s a bold stance to take in the face of more than a little sniffing-around at the federal level, but the league seems prepared to deflect any regulatory pushback. One argument that may work in the NFL’s favor is that four of those five games were simply being relocated from one premium platform (cable TV) to another (streaming).
Like the “87%” argument, that may be a verifiable fact, but it doesn’t necessarily translate to a win for the fans. Meanwhile, the TV partners that have helped the NFL achieve near-total domination over the American psyche are watching closely as the commish projects his vision for a global takeover—one that will almost certainly be predicated on an even greater commitment to streaming.
In the meantime, those same partners await a summons to renegotiate their current multibillion-dollar rights deals. If it can be said that a honeymoon period prevailed following the 2021 agreements, that sense of fellow feeling has long since dissipated.
(This story has been updated in the fourth paragraph with context from the NFL.)
