As the political debate heats up over sports rights shifting to streaming services like Netflix, analysts at LightShed Partners have released data showing that streaming has actually lowered the cost of accessing all the games on NFL by breaking up traditionally costly pay TV bundles into more affordable packages.
"Yes, NFL games are now spread across more services than ever," Richard Greenfield, Brandon Ross and Mark Kelley at LightShed Partners argue. "But streaming competition has splintered the old cable bundle, giving consumers the ability to pay only for what they want. The $1,000-to-watch-the-NFL figure being thrown around by President Trump, regulators, and members of Congress is not grounded in reality."
Their data, shown below, indicates that fans can “watch every NFL game this season, a total of 272 games, for as little as ~$600, or under $3 per game. Strip out Sunday Ticket and you can catch all national matchups plus your local games for $217 with an antenna, or under $400 entirely via a la carte streaming,” they argue.
Their analysis shows that all the games could be watched on an a la carte bundle of streaming services for about $618, or accessed on some of the skinnier bundles available from a streaming pay TV service (vMPVD) like YouTube TV or DirecTV for $806.
All of those options are much cheaper than the traditional pay TV bundles costing about $1005 on Charter's Spectrum.
LightShed partners released their analysis at a time when President Trump and FCC Chair Brendan Carr complained about the high cost of streaming NFL games and the FCC has opened a probe into major sports rights.
In response to the FCC's request for comments on the issue, the NAB and a number of major broadcasters have complained about the complexity high cost of streaming sports on streaming services.
In meetings with FCC staff, the NFL has attempted to rebut those views by arguing that its current policy of distributing media rights “benefits fans and local broadcasters in many ways” and that attempts to end league’s antitrust exemption would mean “higher costs and confusion” for consumers.
"To be fair, watching the NFL is more complicated than it used to be, as no single service has everything," the analysts concluded. "But consumers now have real choice, and for those willing to navigate multiple apps, the savings are meaningful. It is also worth remembering that before 2023, the ONLY way to watch every NFL game was DirecTV with a satellite dish bolted to your house, unless you could prove one would not work at your location. Streaming has been unambiguously pro-consumer."
