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If you want to watch Sunday’s NFL game in London, you’ll need ESPN Plus

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Anyone looking to watch Sunday morning’s NFL game between the Denver Broncos and Jacksonville Jaguars in London will have to pay for the privilege. The game will be streamed by ESPN Plus, the network’s online subscription service, and not televised by any network (unless you live in the Denver or Jacksonville areas, in which case the game will air on local television). It kicks off at 9:30 a.m. Eastern.


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As part of the television deals the NFL announced in March 2021, ESPN Plus received the right to exclusively stream one of the league’s international games each season (the others are televised by NFL Network, the league’s cable channel). The new television contracts, over which the NFL will earn more than $110 billion in rights fees through the 2033 season, represented the league’s first significant leap into the world of streaming-only broadcasts.
As part of the 2021 television deals, Amazon Prime won the right to exclusively stream the NFL’s Thursday night package, a setup that began this season. Peacock, the streaming arm of NBC Universal, also received exclusive rights to certain games over the length of the deal, though there are no such games on this season’s schedule.







“Over the last five years, we’ve started the migration to streaming, and with today’s deals, we make another large step in that direction,” New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft said at the time the new television deals were announced. “Our fans want this option, and our media partners and the league understand that streaming is truly the future.”
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Over the first six weeks of the season, Amazon said its Thursday night games averaged 12.1 million viewers, which is less than the 16.4 million on average who watched the Thursday night games that were televised simultaneously by Fox and the NFL Network last season. But it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, considering that those two television networks have a much longer reach than Amazon Prime, and the streaming rollout has been considered a success.
The first Amazon Prime Thursday night game, Week 2′s Chiefs-Chargers contest, garnered 13.03 million viewers, nearly double the number of people who watched the 2021 “Thursday Night Football” season premiere on NFL Network. Before that Week 2 game, Amazon announced that it had set a record for new Prime sign-ups, and it later said that more people signed up for Prime during the game than on any other day in its history, including Prime Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, when the company offers its most prominent sales.
ESPN Plus costs $9.99 per month or $99.99 for 12 months. It also can be accessed in a bundle with Disney Plus and Hulu for $13.99 per month.

 
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