Dare To Stream: NFL’s Approach To Broadcasting “Costs” Fans Their Sundays

By Joe Darrah

Like any other business, the NFL has every right to attempt to earn as much money as it can. This sentiment does not necessarily represent “greed.” This represents opportunity. The opportunity to financially profit from any business opportunity that you can attempt to move forward with.

So the NFL electing to have one of its six games scheduled during Super Wildcard Weekend, its first real stamp on the sports calendar as each new year unfolds, to appear only through a subscription-based streaming service should not in and of itself be interpreted as a sign of monetary gluttony. It is also not necessarily in a silo the definition of an enterprise that has no fear in going against the grain of providing good, fair customer service to try to make more money.

What should be seen as “greed,” however, and what is not fair customer service, is the league’s choosing to sell this game specifically to one individual streaming service, which in fact is owned by one of the major networks that already broadcasts games anyway, at a time within the weekend schedule in which there is no other game to watch.

This is not the NFL saying, “hey let’s see if more people prefer streaming the game versus watching it on broadcast television.” This is the NFL saying, yes, media conglomerate, we will let you broadcast this game only through your streaming service, and thereby require our fans (and your customers) to buy into a new subscription to see this game (or visit an establishment that is willing to buy the service for its customers while they profit off them). Not to mention further contributing to their already existing password fatigue — and slapping their hand if, God forbid, they attempt to use that password to watch the game, for which they had to pay a subscription fee to acquire, at a home in which they don’t pay the mortgage.

Note the stressing here of the media conglomerate’s customers and the presumably visited establishment’s customers. Because the NFL doesn’t see itself as having customers — it considers people to be fans only. And fans tend to accept the reality of having to go to greater lengths to get what they want — even if they are paying customers along the way.

And this is where the NFL’s real version of greed is most evident. The league doesn’t care enough anymore to keep things as convenient for their fans’ viewing as they once were. They have no concept of customer service because they see themselves without customers. Customers are always someone else’s responsibility despite all the money the league makes from everyone else’s customers.

And when this Sunday’s Bills versus Steelers wildcard contest originally scheduled for the quintessential 1 p.m. ET was rescheduled to the TV abyss that is 4:30 p.m. ET Monday due to weather, it highlighted just how reckless the NFL has become with its product and the once glorious Sundays that were truly saturated by football that we used to enjoy. And, like always, the fans that will have to adjust (with all due respect to weather causing this now watered-down Sunday and the need to protect people’s safety in making the change).

But if safety were truly paramount here, the precious steaming-only game that is to be played in a Kansas City igloo on Saturday night would also be shifted, perhaps to Sunday.

True Football Sundays Are Long Gone
Let’s be honest, here. Super Wildcard Weekend is a mirage, if not a lie anyway. The Eagles have been scheduled to visit Tampa Bay for the last game of the wildcard round on Monday Night Football since the postseason schedule was originally announced last week.

If the NFL believes that it has now effectively made Monday an official part of the weekend, there are probably many other businesses out there that would say their employees’ timecards reflect a different narrative. The league decided in 2021 that there will be at least one Monday wildcard game each postseason moving forward, shifting from what had been a Saturday/Sunday schedule for playoff games leading up to the Conference Championship Sunday.

Now, the playing of NFL games on Saturday actually has an interesting history lesson to it. As difficult as it might be to believe, professional football has not always owned Sundays. The powers that be were essentially legally forced into having to play on Sundays. And history shows that the NFL has occasionally played playoff football on a Monday for decades for various reasons. Imagine that in 1983 the league hosted two wildcard games on a Monday afternoon because (yikes!) Christmas fell on a Sunday that year.

Today, there isn’t a holiday in sight that can stop a “full” Sunday slate of games—regardless of whether it’s a holiday to celebrate the likes of a jolly-old jelly belly and the Catholic Messiah or, as we will see this “weekend,” during a day of observance for one of the world’s most revered civil rights activists.

The only thing that can prevent a “full” Sunday of NFL games is the NFL diminishing football Sundays of its own volition, something it has been systematically guilty of for years. The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 prevents NFL and NCAA games from being played at the same time, which is why the NFL’s spate of Saturday games does not begin each season until the conclusion of the NCAA’s regular season games. It’s only due to an unaddressed legal loophole that the NFL has been permitted to play games on Thursdays the past several years (and beginning on Black Friday this season), a tactic the league began to take after its regular season schedule expanded.

As time has passed, more games have been pulled by the league from Sundays (or shifted to the dark of Sunday mornings on the west coast when the supposed International NFL began playing in other countries.

From game schedule flexing to now all-season-long Thursday night streaming, Sundays continue to lose their luster.

This, of course, pales in comparison to what the players, coaches, and other league personnel must endure with the scheduling, but they seem pretty well compensated at least.

When all is said and done, describing this coming Sunday as “super” will be a stretch at best and a mockery of what Sundays of yore used to be.

And now it’s time to download that streaming service.