The NFL’s Sunday regional broadcasts have long been at the heart of the league’s popularity. Unlike other major American sports that spread games across the week, the NFL traditionally packs most of its schedule into the familiar Sunday afternoon windows at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. ET. Since 1998, those games have been carried exclusively by CBS and Fox. However, the league is now gradually shifting away from a model that has been a cornerstone of its success.

An analysis by Awful Announcing of the schedule data shows that the NFL is set to air 197 Sunday afternoon games this year. That’s slightly down from 198 in 2025 and 211 in 2021, the first season of the expanded 18-week schedule. The 2026 figure is also one fewer than in 2016, when the league still had a shorter regular season.

The NFL has apparently increased the number of standalone windows to 23 from 15 in last year’s distribution. These startling changes come with Netflix recently expanding its agreement with the NFL from two games to five. Similarly, Fox, CBS, and NBC also have new deals this season to add standalone games. Prime Video also added a standalone Black Friday game to its Thursday Night Football package.

Furthermore, even though ESPN owns the NFL Network, it still had to pay extra rights fees to broadcast standalone NFL Network games. The league justifies this by emphasizing that these standalone broadcasts are accessible nationwide and don’t need a Sunday Ticket subscription. This is particularly helpful if a regional Sunday afternoon game is difficult to watch outside your team’s market and if you prefer not to purchase NFL Sunday Ticket.

However, the NFL doesn’t include standalone windows over-the-air packages. Netflix has five exclusive games, the NFL Network has seven, Prime Video has the Black Friday game, and Peacock will also air one game, leaving only nine standalone games available over the air.

Games aired on cable and streaming platforms are still required to be broadcast over-the-air in each team’s home market. However, for most teams, that typically means just one local station in the city carries the game. If you live in a nearby suburb without access to that specific station, you may not be able to watch it over-the-air.

By contrast, Sunday afternoon regional games usually get much wider local broadcast coverage. For example, the Green Bay Packers often receive additional over-the-air coverage in Milwaukee, while the New England Patriots are also widely available in places like Manchester, New Hampshire.

Although this shift is based on the platforms’ wider reach, it has faced constant scrutiny, including a recent gripe from Senator Tammy Baldwin, who called out these streaming platforms for creating paywalls for NFL fans.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin slams the NFL and its shift towards streaming platforms

As a passionate Green Bay Packers fan, Senator Tammy Baldwin has called out the NFL’s decision to schedule her hometown team for a Thanksgiving Eve game against the Los Angeles Rams exclusively on Netflix. While addressing this situation, she claimed the league is forcing “millions of Wisconsinites to pay for a subscription just to watch their home team play.”

“As the cost of just about everything continues to rise, the NFL is once again asking Wisconsinites to spend their hard-earned money on another streaming service. Enough is enough. My For the Fans Act would stop this exact scenario and prevent Wisconsin families from being forced to pay for Netflix just to watch the Packers play this Thanksgiving,” Sen. Baldwin’s statement read.

These comments from Baldwin also come up after she introduced the For the Fans Act, a bill aimed at lowering the costs of sports streaming and eliminating local blackout restrictions. The legislation requires major professional sports leagues to make games accessible on free, over-the-air television or a single free stream for local fans, while banning blackouts on services like NBA League Pass and MLB.tv.

Something that Wisconsin natives experienced last season as the Packers faced divisional rivals, the Chicago Bears, in a playoff game broadcast on Amazon Prime was the absence of a traditional television broadcast. While those in the Green Bay and Milwaukee areas could watch the free broadcast, the state’s other five media markets couldn’t.

The NFL’s shift toward exclusive streaming deals may boost revenue, but it comes at the cost of accessibility for everyday fans. As more games move behind paywalls, growing pushback from lawmakers like Senator Baldwin suggests the league may soon face a reckoning over who truly pays the price for its expansion.