Picture this: it’s 1991. Buffalo Bills kicker Scott Norwood has just missed the game-winning field goal, and the New York Giants are Super Bowl champions. Millions of fans rejoice as they watch Jeff Hostetler hoist the Lombardi trophy on cable television in their living rooms. Life is good.
Fast-forward 33 years. The NFL is more popular than ever. The Kansas City Chiefs have just beaten the Baltimore Ravens on one of the closest out-of-bounds calls ever after a contested game of Thursday Night Football. Chiefs fans rejoice. Well, some fans. Unfortunately, a large quantity of them are left scouring the internet and continuously refreshing their phones for score updates. Life is good — for those subscribed to Amazon Prime. To put it lightly, streaming services are tearing millions of fans away from having the ability to watch the teams they love while sports leagues turn a blind eye directly toward mountains of cash.
Beginning in 2023, Amazon Prime Video acquired the exclusive streaming rights of TNF until 2033 from the NFL, paying the NFL $1 billion annually, according to cnbc.com. This deal marked the first time a streaming service gained exclusive rights to a season-long package of NFL games. Forcing fans to pay $14.99 a month to watch TNF has, unsurprisingly, led to a massive decrease in viewership: Amazon’s peak average audience per-game is still 3 million less than Fox’s, according to sportcal.com.
Even for those who can watch, the Amazon Prime experience has made games less enjoyable. WHS School Resource Officer and avid sports fan Nick Callelo said, “The commentating is garbage…they’re just there like, ‘Oh, there’s a football.’ They don’t know anything.”
TNF is not the only sporting event that streaming services have taken control of. According to msn.com, streaming services have spent a combined $10 billion or more on sports rights in 2024, up from $2.8 billion in 2020. As a result, viewers are forced to pay for numerous streaming sites, such as ESPN+, Paramount+ and Peacock, to watch what was once available on cable.
This, for many viewers, has become unacceptable and, for some, unattainable, leading to a sharp rise in illegal streaming. According to a report by oddspedia.com, 49 percent of NFL fans have admitted to illegally streaming games. Among these fans, 64 percent cite the high price of streaming games to be the main reason redirecting them to illegal sites. Illegal streaming is and should be frowned upon, but for many viewers, it has become the only option.
We once lived in a world where all who had access to cable could watch the sports they love. Now, we are trapped in a nightmare in which America’s pastimes have been monopolized by streaming services. It is time to put the needs of fans over the economic greed of streaming services in order to return the sports world to its true “Prime.”