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This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week.
This week, JJ Watt finally had enough. The former NFL star, who played for the Houston Texans for close to a decade, took to X to declare that he was ready to give up on watching Monday Night Football. “Just frustrating,” Watt posted. “All of it.”
Watt’s ire was caused by the ongoing carriage dispute between Disney and YouTube TV, which resulted in ESPN, and a bunch of other Disney networks, going dark on the Google-owned pay TV service on October 30th. The two companies are fighting over the money YouTube has to pay to carry Disney’s networks, with both rejecting the other side’s demands as unreasonable.
The spat resulted in YouTube TV’s roughly 10 million subscribers not being able to turn into Monday Night Football this week. Some hardcore fans responded by signing up for trials of competing services like Hulu Live or Fubo, but Watt wasn’t having it. “I’m not paying for another streaming subscription,” he pouted.
Watt’s Monday night meltdown is emblematic of the weird world of sports TV in 2025: There are more options than ever to watch matches online, including a growing number of free streams, and streams included with your existing video subscriptions. At the same time, sports streaming is increasingly fragmented. As a result, it’s easier than ever to tune into sports if you’re a casual viewer — but incredibly complex if you’re a hardcore fan dead set on watching every single game of your favorite team and then some.
For the first time, the entire NFL season is on streaming
Sports was long seen as the lone pay TV holdout. The thing that would keep people hooked to their cable subscription, or perhaps help the industry transition from cable- and satellite-based TV services to online pay TV bundles. Think YouTube TV, Sling, Fubo, and the like.
Then, the big streamers opened their wallets, and the leagues just couldn’t say no. Amazon spent big on Thursday Night Football. Netflix got in bed with WWE. Apple teamed up with MLS. On top of those major deals, streamers also freely spent on high-profile one-offs. YouTube streamed its first NFL game in front of the paywall in September. Netflix will once again stream two NFL games over Christmas, while NBC’s Peacock will stream one game on December 27th.
But it’s not just one-offs popping up on streaming. In the 2024–25 season, close to half of all NFL games were only available on pay TV services, according to an analysis published by Activate Consulting as part of the company’s annual Media & Technology Outlook this week. This time around, every single game of the season will be on a streaming service as well.
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