Is access to more NFL games at more cost better?

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Every so often in our changing-every-second media world, it’s worth pausing, taking a look around and measuring just how far we’ve come. Naturally, there’s a handy meme format for this: How It Started/How It’s Going. So as we try to sort through the massive NFL broadcast news of this past week, let’s consider how far we’ve come.

How it started: Every Sunday afternoon, you grabbed your beverage and snack of choice and you plunked down on the couch for six hours of football. Sure, you only had a choice of a few games — and only one if your home-market team was playing — and you might get stuck with, say, a Chargers-Dolphins clunker in one of your time slots. But all games were one click of the remote away, and none of them cost any more than you were already paying.

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How it’s going: Every Sunday afternoon, you’ll grab your beverage and snack of choice, plunk down on your couch and — if you’re a cord-cutter — prepare for up to 13 different games at once. You open up your phone app (Yahoo Sports, of course) to see who’s playing when and on what channel. You get your remote humming, running from your home page through multiple streaming services, dipping in and backing out of Fox/ESPN, Paramount+ and NFL+ apps (and, depending on the game, Netflix, Prime Video or Peacock). Your remote hand will get as much of a workout as an NFL cornerback facing Patrick Mahomes … and oh, will it cost you money.

The overwhelming mantra that drives all content-delivery systems now, from streaming services to email newsletters, is the concept of limitless choice, the idea that (almost) everything everywhere is available all at once. It can be overwhelming, as anyone who’s tried to figure out what movie to stream on a Friday night knows, but it also puts you in control of, basically, your own personal network. But that power comes with a substantial monthly cost. So is that access to more inventory of games worth the price charged to your credit card every month? That’s for you to decide for yourself … and the NFL and its broadcast partners aren’t making the decision easy on you.

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The grand promise of cable unbundling was that we’d all be able to get rid of those shopping channels, old movie channels, endless inane kids’ cartoon channels, screaming-demagogue “news” channels, and all the other gunk on our TV that we never watched and didn’t want. Pick and choose, and you’ll pay for only what you want! What could possibly go wrong?

Like most grand promises, though, the Great Unbundling was built on false hopes. Turns out that when broadcasters know exactly what you want, they know you’ll pay more to get it … so much more, at this point, that a la carte services are approaching, or even surpassing, the cost of old cable bills.

Not only that, sports programming is the last remaining big-tent entertainment product, the one attraction that forces its viewers to watch a specific channel at a specific time. That, of course, makes sports broadcasting rights highly lucrative — or highly expensive, depending on which side of the equation you stand — and take a wild guess who’s going to be bearing the brunt of those ever-higher costs. (Hint: Not the NFL, and not ESPN.)

So what will those costs be? Let’s run a hypothetical here. Although streaming-service costs are almost as slippery as new-car costs, here’s a rough estimate of what cord-cutters can expect to pay for an unbundled bouquet of streaming services each month during the NFL season:

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• ESPN/Fox: $39.99 for Fox Sunday, Monday Night Football, 2027 Super Bowl
• Prime Video: $8.99 (video only) for Thursday Night Football
• Peacock: $10.99 (with ads) for Sunday Night Football
• Paramount+: $7.99 (with ads) and up, CBS Sunday
• Netflix: $7.99 (with ads): Christmas Day games
• NFL+: $6.99 (without Red Zone): Local & primetime games on phone/tablet

That right there is more than $80 a month to cover your NFL needs. Eighty bucks a month! And that includes the ad-based tiers, so you’re not even going to be able to escape ads at these prices. This is what loving the NFL gets you: a price tag on your emotions.

Now, granted, with all that spending you do get an array of choices you didn’t get back in the old broadcast-only days. You can ditch that lame Titans-Jags game in favor of something more lively, or you can mainline the NFL straight with Red Zone. You don’t have to be satisfied with what the network broadcasts dish up to you, you can create your own Sunday programming … as long as you’re willing to pay.

So which way do you go, a less-expensive cafeteria meal, or a pricey all-inclusive buffet? Is it better to have more choice at more cost, or are you OK with the cheaper, smaller menu? Which way do you go?

This news was originally published on this post .