The NFL knows how many streaming services are called the same thing — it just doesn’t care. It killed NFL Game Pass today to launch a shiny new thing named NFL+. Available now through the NFL App, the new sports streaming platform mostly does what you’d probably predict something called NFL+ would do: play football games and football-adjacent stuff.
However, there are some laughable limitations to what you can stream; subscribers will not be getting access to the full NFL slate as they would with the league’s pricier Sunday Ticket. Here’s a rundown of what comes with the base tier and the Premium tier (which is what Game Pass became):
NFL+Â
• costs $4.99 a month; $39.99 a year
• has live local and primetime games on mobile and tablet devices
• has live out-of-market preseason games across all devices
• has live game audio (home, away, and national calls) for every game of the season
• has NFL library programming on-demand (ad-free)
NFL+ Premium
• costs $9.99 a month; $79.99 a year
• has everything NFL Game Pass had
• has everything base NFL+ has
• has full game replays across devices (ad-free)
• has condensed game replays across devices (ad-free)
• has Coaches Film, including All-22 (ad-free)
The devil’s in the device details. The league’s longtime commissioner and reliable heel Roger Goodell touted access to “the most valuable content in the media industry: live NFL games†in an accompanying statement, but if you want to stream its biggest live games on a TV, NFL+ won’t help. And several of the base tier’s NFL+ offerings had been free on the NFL App until now. Compare that to the other major sports league’s offerings — NBA League Pass, NHL.TV or MLB.TV — which offer out-of-market games, and NFL+ feels thin.
For a more sweeping football package, you’ll need to sign up for NFL Sunday Ticket, for about $300 (though Sunday Ticket’s future is also uncertain, with several streaming companies jockeying to win the next contract). “We look forward,†Goodell said in that statement, “to continuing to grow NFL+ and deepening our relationship with fans.â€