The NFL is a business, and businesses are all about making money. No matter how much they try to say they put fans first, the reality is, they will always choose making money over the fan experience, which is why the cost of being a die-hard NFL fan has sky rocketed over the years.

In 2020, you were able to purchase the NFL Sunday Ticket, giving you access to every single NFL game outside of your local networks for around $300. And if you were a student, it would run you under $100. That’s a hefty price to pay, but to get access to 272 games, that averages out to a little more than a dollar a game. That’s not too bad.

Unfortunately, the days of paying for one subscription and getting access to every game is gone. The NFL got greedy, and it’s costing fans big time.

The 87 Percent Hoax

The NFL has received a ton of criticism for partnering with streaming services like Netflix, Prime Video and Peacock to broadcast their games. In response to this criticism, the NFL made a statement saying 87 percent of their games can be watched for free, but of course, that’s not necessarily true.

While yes, 87 percent of their games are broadcasted on CBS, NBC and FOX, the average fan doesn’t get free access to all of those games. Typically, each week, your local CBS and FOX stations will both broadcast one game at the 1 pm ET window, and then one of them will broadcast one game at the 4:25 pm ET window. That means you will only get to watch three of the up to 16 games a week if you only pay for cable. So while the NFL is trying to drive this 87 percent of games are free narrative, it is complete and udder BS.

This isn’t a huge deal, because it’s always been like this. You’ve always had to purchase NFL Sunday Ticket if you wanted to get all of the non-primetime games, but that was just one extra cost that was under $300 per year. Now, unless you’re a new subscriber, a student or military, it’s going to run you nearly $400 for Sunday Ticket (without RedZone by the way), and you don’t even get every game!

As long as you have an antenna and Sunday Ticket, you’ll be able to watch 87 percent of the league’s games in 2026. But for most NFL fans, that’s not enough.

How Much Will it Cost to Watch Every Prime Time Game?

Fortunately for NFL fans, Sunday Night Football is broadcasted by NBC, which, like CBS and FOX, is free to watch on cable television. But if you want access to Thursday Night Football and Monday Night Football, you’re going to have to cough up a pretty penny.

If you want access to Monday Night Football and don’t have a cable package with it included, you’re going to have to pay $29.99 a month for ESPN Unlimited to gain access to their four MNF games a month. That comes out to over $7 a game, and over the course of the four-month regular season, that would cost you about $120.

If you have a cable or YouTube TV plan that includes ESPN, that cost would be significantly cheaper, given you’re also getting so many other channels, but still, it ain’t cheap to watch just 17 games.

If you want to watch Thursday Night Football, it’s quite a bit cheaper. You can subscribe to Prime Video for just $7.99 a month, which comes out to about $32 for the entire four-month season. You get access to 17 games for a little less than $2 per game. Not bad, but still more expensive than it was before Prime Video got the rights to the TNF in 2022.

In all, it will cost you about $152 to watch every primetime game this season. Add that to the $400+ you’ll be paying for Sunday Ticket (unless you have a special promo), and that’s already $552 to watch almost every game.

What You’ll Miss Out On Without ESPN and Prime Video

If you don’t want to cough up $152 to watch all the primetime games, that’s completely understandable. The world is expensive, and not everyone can afford to spend that kind of money on a luxury such as watching football. But man, if you don’t subscribe, you’re going to miss out on a lot of terrific matchups.

This isn’t me pushing anyone to give their money to ESPN or Amazon, but I just want to make you aware of what you’ll be missing out on if you don’t.

Thursday Night Football has been pretty awful historically, but Prime Video has some terrific matchups on deck. Here are five of my favorite TNF games this season.

For the first time in forever, the TNF schedule is absolutely loaded with great games. I think the $7.99 price tag is well worth it this year.

Monday Night Football is typically stronger than Thursday Night Football. That actually may not be true this year, but there are still some fantastic Monday games this year. Here are my five favorites.

Last year, it felt like you could afford to miss out on the primetime games because a lot of them were duds, but this year, I’d be tempted to cough up the extra cash to tune into some of these matchups.

What About the Netflix Games?

The NFL has also given Netflix five games this season. They will host the second game of the season and the first NFL game in Australia on Thursday, September 10th. And this isn’t just some random Jets vs Titans game, it’s a huge NFC West showdown between the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers.

Netflix will also host a Thanksgiving Eve game between the Green Bay Packers and Los Angeles Rams on November 25th. They will then follow it up with a Christmas Day doubleheader, featuring a matchup between the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears and one between the Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings. If you’re smart, you’ll subscribe on Thanksgiving Eve, and the last day of your one-month subscription will be on Christmas Day (December 25th).

Finally, Netflix will also get a Week 18 game at 1 pm ET. The matchup is yet to be disclosed, but we do know it will take place on Saturday, January 9th.

If you play it smart, you will only have to subscribe to Netflix for three months to watch all of their games. One month for the Australia game, one month for Thanksgiving Eve and Christmas Day, and once for their Week 18 game.

So what does a Netflix subscription run you? If you go with the cheapest option, the one that comes with ads, it will cost you $8.99 per month. Luckily, Netflix allows all their subscribers, regardless of tiers, to watch their NFL games, so in total, it will run you about $27 to watch all five Netflix games. Worth it? I don’t know, but there are some good matchups.

What is the Total Cost to Watch Every Game in 2026?

It’s nearly impossible to put an exact price tag on what it’ll cost you to watch every single NFL game. It all depends on your situation and what tiers you pay for.

With NFL Sunday Ticket, unless you have a promo, you’re going to be paying at least $378 for their basic package, and if you want RedZone, it’s going to jump to $480.

If you have a TV with an antenna, you’re going to have free access to CBS, FOX and NBC, but a lot of people don’t anymore. Many of us (myself included) pay for YouTube TV, which costs $83 per month. That obviously comes with more than just CBS, FOX and NBC, but you still have to pay to get those channels.

Then you have to pay ESPN $29.99 a month just to watch Monday Night Football and Amazon $7.99 a month to watch Thursday Night Football. But that’s not all, you also have to pay Netflix a minimum of $8.99 a month to watch all of their games, and if you don’t have CBS or NBC, you also need a $7.99 Peacock subscription and an $8.99 Paramount subscription.

If you want to watch every single NFL game this year, it will cost you at least $600, but it will very likely cost you even more than that.

Gone are the days of getting every single game for under $300. No matter how much fans moan and complain about all the subscriptions they need to watch games, the NFL is going to keep expanding if it means they get to rake in more dough.

They don’t actually care about the fans. The thing they care about is lining their pockets.