One of the most difficult realities of not living in your favorite NFL team’s broadcast market is that there aren’t many legitimate ways to watch your team’s games on Sunday afternoons. NFL Sunday Ticket is the only video streaming service we’ve reviewed that allows you to watch out-of-market regular-season games live. NFL Sunday Ticket is primarily a cable package offered by DirecTV, but some audiences (we’ll explain which ones) can get this service without cable. In testing this non-cable version, we liked the service’s playback interfaces and reliable streaming performance. However, this service is extremely expensive, considering that you can’t watch Thursday night, local Sunday afternoon, Sunday night, or Monday night games live.
What Can You Watch With NFL Sunday Ticket?
NFL Sunday Ticket enables you to watch out-of-market regular-season games on Sunday afternoons, which distinguishes it from every other live TV service we’ve reviewed. You do not get to watch coverage of your local NFL team, however. You might not care about your in-market team, but this limitation means that you can’t watch your favorite out-of-market team if it is playing your local team.
NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers also can’t watch games on Thursday, Sunday, and Monday nights. Some international games are also excluded from coverage. At most, that means you get to watch about 12 or 13 games live on Sundays, depending on the week and your location. To watch all the games, every week (including during the postseason), you need to combine NFL Sunday Ticket with another service.
You do get 30-minute commercial-free replays (called Short Cuts) of games (only those that are available on NFL Sunday Ticket) starting after midnight ET on Sunday through Wednesday at midnight ET. NFL Game Pass offers a similar condensed game replay mode.
There is no additional on-demand content on NFL Sunday Ticket. Most other live TV services have a distinct advantage over NFL Sunday Ticket in that they do not only focus on NFL coverage. Most offer tons of other news, sports, and entertainment channels, as well as huge libraries of on-demand content.
How does NFL Sunday Ticket’s coverage compare to that of other NFL streaming services? First and foremost, NFL Sunday Ticket is the only legal way to watch live, out-of-market NFL games on Sunday afternoon. No other service offers that access.
However, if you care more about prime-time games (Thursday Night Football, Sunday Night Football, or Monday Night Football) or you live in your favorite team’s broadcast market, other options are a better choice. For instance, FuboTV, Hulu + Live TV, and YouTube TV allow you to watch every prime-time and in-market game (those that air on CBS and FOX) each week. Those services cover about seven games each week and enable you to watch postseason games.
DirecTV Stream offers similar access to live games, but it lacks the NFL Network channel. You’ll miss out on some Thursday Night Football matchups. Sling TV offers NBC and FOX affiliates in many markets but lacks CBS channels entirely (although you can go through the trouble of configuring a digital antenna to work with that service). However, it does include ESPN, which means you can watch Monday Night Football. Locast used to be an inexpensive option for watching local channels, but that service has since shut down.
NFL Game Pass is a standalone service that allows you to watch replays of every game each week, regardless of your location. It includes games going back several years and is the only legitimate way to ensure that you can watch every single regular-season and postseason NFL game, albeit not live.
Paramount+, Peacock, and Prime Video all have limited NFL coverage, too, despite primarily offering on-demand content. For example, Paramount+ Premium subscribers can watch live streams of NFL games that air on local CBS networks on Sunday afternoons. Those that subscribe to Peacock’s Premium tier can stream Sunday Night Football games. Prime Video users get to watch select Thursday Night Football games this season.
The NFL and Yahoo Sports apps allow you to watch in-market and prime-time games for free on Android and iOS devices. However, you can’t cast these games to a larger screen which is a pain.
If that all sounds confusing and expensive, that’s because it is. The NFL makes it needlessly difficult and cost-prohibitive for you to watch your favorite team.
If you plan to watch any other sports, our roundup of the best sports streaming services can help you pick the best option. We have dedicated roundups for the best MLB streaming services, NBA streaming services, and NHL streaming services, too.
How Much Does NFL Sunday Ticket Cost?
NFL Sunday Ticket offers two plans: NFL Sunday Ticket To Go and NFL Sunday Ticket Max. The To Go package currently, at the start of the season) costs $293.96, while the Max Plan costs $395.99. An NFL Sunday Ticket subscription lasts until the end of the regular season. The service splits your bill into monthly payments of $73.49 per month (for the To Go plan) or $99 per month (Max plan). Subscribers to the online version of NFL Sunday Ticket have until the first Sunday of the regular season to cancel their subscription; otherwise, you are locked into the full pricing period. However, if you subscribe later in the season, you may be able to pay less than that full amount. The reverse is true, too. If you subscribe before the season begins, you have to pay for the full four months of the regular season. You need to go into the settings to manually turn off the subscription auto-renewal setting; it’s on by default, annoyingly.
Both plans get you access to the same lineup of live, out-of-market games on Sundays. You also get the same features and playback modes. The difference between the plans is that the Max Plan adds on NFL RedZone Channel and DirecTV Fantasy Zone. Those channels should most appeal to fantasy football fanatics. You can optionally add on NFL Game Pass to the Max plan at a discount (it’s currently listed at $50, while the regular price is $99.99).
For comparison, fuboTV, Hulu + Live TV, and YouTube TV all start at $64.99 per month. You can get the NFL RedZone channel on any of those services by paying extra for the Sports Plus with NFL RedZone (fuboTV), Sports (Hulu + Live TV), or Sports Plus (YouTube TV) add-ons. Hulu’s add-on costs $9.99 per month, while the other two are $10.99 per month. Even with those add-ons, these three services each cost much less than NFL Sunday Ticket.
DirecTV Stream starts at $69.99 per month, while Sling TV’s combined Orange + Blue plan ($50 per month) is the cheapest live TV service with sports content that we’ve tested. NFL Game Pass charges $99.99 per season. Paramount+ Premium and Prime Video, both of which offer limited NFL coverage, are $9.99 per month and $8.99 per month respectively. Peacock Premium costs $4.99 per month.
Who Can Get NFL Sunday Ticket?
The non-cable version of NFL Sunday Ticket is not available to everyone. If you read the fine text at the bottom of the signup page, the service outlines eligible users as those “who live in select multi-dwelling unit buildings (apartments, condos, etc.,) nationwide in the U.S. where DIRECTV service is not available, live in select areas within various metropolitan cities, live in a residence that has been verified as unable to receive DIRECTV satellite TV service due to obstructions blocking access to satellite signals, actively or previously enrolled college students.” DirecTV’s rights to the Sunday Ticket package are set to expire at the end of the 2022 season. Apple, Amazon, and Disney are all reportedly interested in taking over the rights to these games and I can only hope that those companies get rid of this ridiculous cable requirement.
You can download the NFL Sunday Ticket app on mobile platforms (Android, Fire OS, iOS), media streaming devices (Apple TV, Chromecast, Fire TV, and Roku), up to the latest generation of game consoles (PlayStation and Xbox), and select smart TVs. You can also stream games from a web browser. NFL Sunday Ticket is only available to subscribers in the US.
(Editors’ Note: The following interface and streaming experience sections describe the service at the time of last testing.)
NFL Sunday Ticket on the Web
NFL Sunday Ticket’s experience on the web is a bit of a mess. When you sign into the service, the landing page basically just shows you your subscription plan. In a drop-down menu in the upper right corner, you can access your account settings and billing details. More importantly, that menu allows you to access the playback interface for the games, but that screen is only accessible on Sundays. None of the options in the settings affect the playback experience; all he controls are directly accessible from the playback screen.
I did experience some issues with the site. For instance, it randomly signed me out at one point in testing and showed an error message that it couldn’t find my credentials on file. Signing in again solved the issue. A few other times, the site didn’t accept my credentials on the first login attempt. The auto sign-out period is also much too short.
Once you get to the playback screen, you see the scores running across the top of the screen, along with links to the Fantasy Zone and Red Zone channels (these are only accessible to the Max plan subscribers). Simply click on a game’s box score to watch the live stream. You won’t find an equivalent to NFL Game Pass’ excellent search functionality that lets you filter plays by a player, down, quarter, or result.
NFL Sunday Ticket on Mobile
I tested the NFL Sunday Ticket app on a Android 11 device and did not have any issues signing into my account. The app is pretty simple to use. In the settings, you can turn off cellular data usage and enable push notifications for when pre-games, Short Cuts, or your favorite teams are available to watch. The app performed fine in testing.
You navigate the app via a series of icons at the bottom of the screen: Games, Highlights, Stat | Standing, Fantasy, and My Player. When games are available to watch, you can jump directly into playback from the Games section by tapping on the box score. The Fantasy Zone and RedZone channels are accessible from here, too. The Highlights section organizes the Short Cuts of games when they are available. The Stat | Standing section enables you to see game, team, and player stats from the week’s current games, as well as the current conference standings.
The last two sections are aimed at fantasy football players. You can sign directly into your NFL Fantasy account in the Fantasy section or track individual players in the MyPlayer section.
Playback Experience
NFL Sunday Ticket has most of the standard playback controls on the web. You can pause streams, move to the live broadcast, and toggle closed captions. However, you cannot start streams over from the beginning of the broadcast as you can with fuboTV or DirecTV Stream on select channels. You can, however, view up to four games simultaneously in various viewing configurations, though organizing games into each slot was a bit wonky in testing.
At the top of the screen, you can view box scores from different games and click on them to watch live coverage. On the left-hand side of the screen, you can scroll through game highlights, view game stats, sign in to your NFL Fantasy account, and look up stats for individual players. As I discuss in the next section, you can also customize the Closed Captions from this menu. The mobile app’s playback screen does not have all those extra features, just the standard playback controls. One cool feature is a pop-up notification that alerts you of big plays from across the league; you can click the notification to watch the play and then the service brings you back to whatever game you were watching.
The service only allows you to stream on one device at a time. This compares poorly to the competition. DirecTV Stream lets you stream on up to 20 devices concurrently on your home network. fuboTV, Hulu + Live TV, YouTube TV all offer add-ons that significantly expand the number of allowable concurrent streams.
The games on Sunday Ticket are all live broadcasts, so, as with any other live TV streaming service, you will have to sit through commercials. Alternatively, you could just wait to watch the Short Cut versions of games. NFL Game Pass hardly shows any ads in its replays, so that might be a better option if you still want to watch a game in its entirety or are planning to not watch the games live anyway.
I tested NFL Sunday Ticket by flipping through games and streaming several at the same time during the Week 3’s broadcast block on Sunday afternoon. I didn’t experience any issues with laggy video or weak audio when I tested the service on my desktop PC and phone over my home Ethernet and Wi-FI networks (200Mbps download). The picture quality looked better than that of NFL Game Pass and on par with top video streaming services. A rep from NFL Sunday Ticket said that CBS broadcasts are in 1080i and FOX broadcasts are in 720p, while some platforms support 60fps streams. For comparison, fuboTV will stream some NFL games this season in 4K. Hulu + Live TV, Paramount+, and YouTube TV all support up to 1080p/60fps streams on select channels and platforms.
Accessibility and Other Features
NFL Sunday Ticket includes closed captions for all its live content. You can change the language, choose from a default style, or create a custom template directly from the playback screen. One accessibility feature that no live TV service offers is audio descriptions, or audible narrations of on-screen actions that would not be otherwise discernible from dialog alone. I’ve only seen support for this feature for on-demand movies and shows on Apple TV+, Disney+, Hulu, Netflix, and Prime Video.
The service does not include any parental control options, but that’s entirely understandable based on the content NFL Sunday Ticket shows. You also cannot record any games to DVR storage. Most live TV streaming services we’ve reviewed allow you to record broadcasts. YouTube TV, with its 4K Plus add-on even lets you download your DVR recordings for offline viewing.
NFL Sunday Ticket and VPN
A VPN is an excellent tool for helping to protect your privacy online, but not all video streaming services allow you to stream content over a VPN connection due to potential regional content restrictions. I tried streaming a Sunday afternoon game from my phone and PC (both were connected to a US-based Mullvad VPN server) and did not encounter any issues.
Even if your VPN and video streaming service work together for now, that’s no guarantee that they will continue to do so. Video streaming services are always finding new ways to detect and block VPN traffic to their sites.
A Lot of Football for a Lot of Money
NFL Sunday ticket is the only option for fans who want to watch live, out-of-market games on Sunday Afternoon. We like the service’s many playback features, but the asking price is higher than other live TV streaming services that cover far more than just NFL Games. If you live in your favorite team’s coverage market, a subscription to Sunday Ticket is not worth the price, unless you have a deep need to see every Sunday afternoon game live every week. Furthermore, even if you do sign up, you still need to find another service to watch prime-time and postseason games.
YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV are our top overall picks for live TV streaming services because both offer an excellent range of channels and features.
