NFL’s grossly expanded national schedule is making RedZone and Sunday Ticket less essential
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The NFL continued to increase the number of national broadcasts, devaluing both the RedZone and the Sunday Ticket.
The 2026-27 season will begin on Wednesday, followed by a game in Australia on Thursday night. The league will also hold its first Thanksgiving broadcast this year, with three games played on Thanksgiving and one on Black Friday. Another game is set for Christmas Eve and three more games are scheduled for Christmas Day.
Beyond that, the NFL is offering its postseason Saturday package from 15-18. It expands the weeks to four weekends. A total of nine international matches will be played in the league this season, and all of them will be broadcast nationally.
And all of this is on top of the league’s usual three-game bracket, which takes place on Sunday and Monday.
Streaming service EverPass Media announced it will become the exclusive commercial provider of NFL Sunday Ticket starting with the 2026 season. (Aaron M. Sprecher/Getty Images)
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The NFL saw the risks of overloading the national schedule last season. By midseason, there simply weren’t enough interested teams to justify the number of independent broadcasts.
Last Christmas, five of the six participating teams were either eliminated from playoff contention or ultimately missed the postseason. Only one of the six teams competing on Thanksgiving made the playoffs.
The Sunday match slate was elite enough that fans could justify paying a Sunday Ticket to access every out-of-market match. This season, YouTube will charge returning subscribers around $480 for the bundle. However, the more games are transferred to independent broadcasts, the fewer games remain in the traditional 13:00 and 16:25 windows, leaving the Sunday Ticket with less to offer.
Take Thanksgiving week as an example. By Sunday morning, 10 teams will have already played. Six more teams will appear in the national Sunday afternoon competition, “Sunday Night Football” or “Monday Night Football.” That leaves just eight games left for paying Sunday Ticket viewers.
NFL RedZone plays on the video board before the game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and the San Francisco 49ers at Levi’s Stadium on September 28, 2025 in Santa Clara, California. (Matthew Huang/Icon Sportswire)
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The same dynamic applies to RedZone. The channel was once crucial to the Sunday viewing experience. It was the most efficient and exciting way for viewers to follow every meaningful moment on a crowded Sunday. However, with fewer games available in the early and late windows, RedZone has become less necessary now.
Any games with content from the middle to the end of the season will likely be broadcast nationally. Pursuing other, less consequential games may only interest sports bettors and fantasy football players.
At the same time, fans now must pay multiple streaming platforms, including Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and Peacock, to access the entire NFL schedule. This additional fragmentation may also reduce consumers’ willingness to pay for premium products such as Sunday Ticket and RedZone.
Josh Allen is shown on the field in a Buffalo Bills jersey. NFL fans need YouTube TV for “NFL Sunday Ticket” and Amazon Prime, Peacock and Netflix subscriptions to access every game. (Lauren Leigh Bacho/Getty Images)
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More generally, the NFL is eroding the scarcity that helped transform the sport into America’s dominant television presence.
Sundays were a different feeling. The condensed schedule created a sense of opportunity and urgency that was diluted by spreading games across Thursdays, occasional Wednesdays, Fridays off, Saturday nights, Sunday mornings, and multiple broadcast-only windows.
For the first time in decades, NFL games are starting to feel skippable. There are too many spread out over too many days. The combination of an overloaded schedule, international travel and shortened lead time is producing increasingly mediocre matchups in prime television windows.
The NFL is unlikely to reverse course due to concerns about the quality of play. The league has shown little evidence that competitive aesthetics are as important as growing media rights and maximizing inventory.
But if the continued expansion of national windows undermines premium features like Sunday Ticket and RedZone, the league may eventually reevaluate whether it’s stretching the product too much.
