America’s most popular sport is back—and the NFL just set a new record in its opening week: it was the highest-scoring Sunday in week one ever. But the average viewer would have to jump through hoops to have seen all those touchdowns—it takes subscription after subscription to catch kickoff.
The NFL is running into a shrinkflation problem—the league is downsizing the amount of games available in individual packages even as costs climb for fans. And attending a game in-person hasn’t gotten any cheaper either. The country has seen five straight years of inflation above 2%, and that has translated into bouts of shrinkflation in response.
For example, take a look at NFL Sunday Ticket, the league’s out-of-market Sunday afternoon package that has been an option for fans to watch since 1994—allowing fans to catch games outside of their local teams. It originally was an exclusive partnership with DirecTV, with the satellite company losing the rights for the service at the end of the 2022 season—leaving the program in the hands of YouTubeTV since the 2023 season.
NFL’s Sunday Ticket carried 191 games in the 2025 season, a decline from 211 in 2021 during DirecTV’s tenure—and while the 2026 season boasts roughly 200 games, it’s still under that 2021 total. The reason? The league expanded game time across a Thursday, Friday, Sunday and Monday night slate—and it doesn’t include international and holiday games. What used to be a once-a-week-on-Sunday couch marathon has turned into fans tuning in day after day, and the package doesn’t include the games outside of 1:00 PM and 4:00 PM on Sundays.
And to add insult to injury for football fans, the Sunday Ticket has been inching up in price point. YouTubeTV subscribers are paying $378 for the season, compared to $293.94 under DirecTV—a 28.6% increase. The price can even reach $480 for customers who don’t qualify for the subscriber rate. According to YouTube’s current promotional offer, new customers can get Sunday Ticket in eight payments of $47.25—and will require a separate YouTubeTV plan for local and national games.
YouTube and DirecTV did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune.
That’s just the state of American sports
But this isn’t just a problem related to 6-foot giants in gladiator-esque helmets and cleats. Across the American sports ecosystem, costs have climbed for the consumer: according to a June data report from CreditKarma, more than a third of sports fans have spent more than they had budgeted for on sports fandom. Additionally, the data also found nearly three-quarters of fans who spend on their fandom said higher prices have led many to buy less merchandise and attend fewer games—essentially pricing them out: the report found 10% of fans had dropped one or more sports entirely due to the cost.
There is an economic boost, to be sure—31% of sports fans that lived in a city that hosted sports events said it provided a positive economic boost for their communities and local businesses. The study, conducted after an “exciting stretch” of sports in America following the New York Knicks ending a 53-year title drought and the FIFA World Cup being hosted on home soil, said nearly half of sports fans would “find a way” to attend a championship event involving their team “no matter what.”
This was particularly evident in the Knicks’ 2026 championship run, where the cheapest ticket for Madison Square Garden seats in the NBA Finals ran fans roughly $4,000, leading some New Yorkers to go for the cheaper option: flying to Texas to catch games on San Antonio’s home turf.
America’s favorite game
The NFL has become one of the most valuable and watched properties in American television—and streaming. The 2025 regular season averaged 18.7 million viewers per game across both television and digital platforms, a 10% increase from 2024 and the second-highest average since Nielsen began tracking NFL audiences in 1988. Of the highest viewed telecasts, NBC’s Sunday Night Football averaged 23.5 million viewers, CBS averaged 21.25 million, Fox averaged 19.63 million and ESPN/ABC’s Monday Night Football averaged 15.8 million.
That popularity gives the NFL leverage to divide its inventory of games among broadcasters and streaming services. The league is selling its games in distribution—allowing multiple platforms to host separate games in competition, while the league gets the draw.
CBS carries Sunday afternoon AFC games and Fox has the NFC package. NBC holds Sunday Night Football, ESPN and ABC casts Monday Night Football, Amazon Prime Video has exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football and Netflix has exclusive rights to certain Christmas Day games. Peacock also has an exclusive regular season game slate and YouTube handles Sunday Ticket.
This means for fans who want to follow football past their local team, the fragmentation might lead them opening accounts for multiple platforms—and their wallets. A cord-cutter trying to follow the NFL nationally would need access to live-television coverage for broadcast networks, Paramount+ for CBS games, Fox One for Fox games, Peacock for NBC’s streaming inventory, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and ESPN. That’s not including the Sunday Ticket package from YouTubeTV.
Estimates calculated by the New York Times put the cost of watching the NFL’s nationally televised games at roughly $484 before adding the cost of NFL Sunday Ticket.
That’s just watching from home—going to a game is is worse
The cost of attending an NFL game hasn’t seen any less jump either. Team Marketing Report’s Fan Cost Index, which tracks the cost of taking a family to a game, found in its 2024 report that the average NFL ticket had risen 12.2% to $136.38.
The report also found that the average cost of attending a game rose again in 2025 to $196, making it a 72% jump since 2015. That increase substantially outpaced the 36.5% increase in overall US consumer prices over the same period.
But that’s all part of the NFL’s draw. Demand hasn’t disappeared for the sport—and according to a report from the Sports Business Journal, the league’s stadiums remained the most heavily attended venues in American sports. And the league isn’t satisfied with just the American market—it’s expanding into the international spotlight.
