The television rights to broadcast National Football League (NFL) games are the most lucrative and expensive rights of any sport in the world. Television brought professional football into prominence in the modern era after World War II. Since then, National Football League broadcasts have become among the most-watched programs on American television, and the financial fortunes of entire networks have rested on owning NFL broadcasting rights. This has raised questions about the impartiality of the networks' coverage of games and whether they can criticize the NFL without fear of losing the rights and their income.
Since the 1960s, all regular season and playoff games broadcast in the United States have been aired by national television networks. Since 1998, regionally shown games on Sunday afternoons have been televised on CBS and Fox, which primarily carry games of AFC and NFC teams respectively (the conference of the away team generally determines the broadcaster of an inter-conference game). Nationally televised regular season games on Sunday and Monday nights have aired on NBC and ESPN, respectively, since 2006. In addition, a "flexible scheduling" policy allows the league to reschedule Sunday afternoon and night games to different time slots and/or re-assign them to different networks regardless of conference in the second half of the season. Since the 2023 season, Monday night games are now also subject to flexible scheduling. During the postseason, ESPN/ABC airs two or three, NBC airs two or three, while CBS and Fox air the rest of the AFC and NFC games, respectively. The Super Bowl is currently rotated annually among CBS, Fox, NBC, and ABC/ESPN.
With games airing on CBS, NBC, Fox, and ESPN/ABC, the NFL thus holds broadcast contracts with four companies (Paramount Global, NBCUniversal, Fox Corporation and The Walt Disney Company/Hearst Communications, respectively) that control a combined vast majority of the country's television product. These four broadcasters paid a combined total of US$39.6 billion to air games from 2014 to 2022. They previously paid a combined total of $20.4 billion to air games between 2006 and 2013. They will then pay over $110 billion for the rights lasting from 2023 through 2033.
NFL preseason telecasts are more in line with the other major sports leagues' regular-season telecasts: preseason telecasts are more locally produced, usually by a local affiliate of one of the above terrestrial television networks. Some preseason games will air nationally, however. Under the NFL's anti-siphoning rules for cable games, these stations usually will air simulcasts of ESPN and/or NFL Network games in their local markets if the local team is playing.
Overview of schedule
The NFL regular season begins in the second weekend in September (the weekend after Labor Day in the United States) and ends in mid-January. Each team plays 17 games during an 18-week period. Typically, the majority of each week's games are played on Sunday afternoon. The Sunday afternoon games are televised regionally, where the particular game available on local television will depend on where the viewer is located, and begin at either 1:00 p.m., 4:05 p.m., or 4:25 p.m. Eastern Time. In addition, there are usually single nationally televised games each on Thursday night, Sunday night, and Monday night. These primetime games are broadcast across the country over one national over-the-air broadcast, cable network, or streaming service, where there are no regional restrictions, nor any other competing NFL contest.
All playoff games, the Super Bowl and the Pro Bowl are nationally televised on either Saturday, Sunday or Monday in January and February, and either in the afternoon or in primetime.
Scheduling during the NFL preseason is more lenient in that most games usually start based on local time. Thus, games on the West Coast are usually played after 7:00 p.m. Pacific Time (10:00 p.m. Eastern Time). However, the handful of primetime, nationally televised preseason games are still played at approximately 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
Current broadcasting contracts
The television rights to the NFL are the most expensive rights of not only any American sport, but any American entertainment property. With the fragmentation of audiences due to the increased specialization of broadcast and cable TV networks, sports remain one of the few entertainment properties that not only can guarantee a large and diversified audience, but one that will watch live broadcasts.