NFL shops five‑game package

The National Football League is shopping a separate five-game package for the 2026 season, with YouTube, Netflix and Fox reported as current bidders. (nbcsports.com) The package is not a full-season contract. The league has offered bidders a menu of more than five possible games and let each bidder choose the five it wants, according to Pro Football Talk. (nbcsports.com) Reported options include the Week 1 game in Australia, a possible Thanksgiving Eve game, a second Black Friday game and a Christmas Eve game. Front Office Sports reported the five games were rights the league recently regained from Disney in a broader deal with ESPN. (nbcsports.com) (frontofficesports.com) The timing matters because the National Football League can reopen major media contracts before their scheduled 2033 end date. Pro Football Talk reported in March that network executives expected the league to push for new deals before the 2026 season begins. (nbcsports.com) League media chief Hans Schroeder said the resale of those five games needs to be finished before the schedule release in mid-May 2026. He also said the market was sending the league “really interesting proposals,” according to Front Office Sports. (frontofficesports.com) Netflix already has a foothold in this part of the calendar. The league announced in May 2024 that Netflix would carry two Christmas Day games in 2024 and at least one Christmas game in both 2025 and 2026. (nfl.com) That Christmas experiment drew a large audience. The National Football League said Netflix’s 2024 Christmas games reached 65 million United States viewers, and the 2025 games again included local over-the-air carriage in the participating teams’ markets. (nfl.com) Fox is the outlier in this bidding group because it is a broadcast network, not a subscription streaming service. Pro Football Talk reported that keeping the mini-package on broadcast television, or making it free on YouTube, could help the league as scrutiny grows over moving more games behind paywalls. (nbcsports.com) The schedule itself is changing around the package. Front Office Sports reported the 2026 season is expected to open on a Wednesday, Monday Night Football doubleheaders involving ESPN and American Broadcasting Company are being dropped, and Fox is set to carry the third game in a 2026 Christmas tripleheader while Netflix carries two. (frontofficesports.com) What the league is selling, then, is not just five games. It is a set of holiday, international and stand-alone windows that can be moved to the bidder that best fits the National Football League’s next round of media deals. (nbcsports.com) (frontofficesports.com)