The 2023 NFL season is now approaching the business end, and you can watch pretty much every second of it live on UK TV.
We’ve come a long way since the early days of NFL coverage on this side of the pond, when you had to wait a full week for just one highlights show, and only the Super Bowl was televised live.
Now it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet of pro football entertainment, and it provides popcorn-worthy matchups at every turn.
Here is how the NFL TV landscape looks as we head into the post-season.
You can watch every single post-season matchup on TV in the UK, culminating with a mouthwatering showdown for Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas (kickoff time GMT):
Sunday February 11, 2024
Once THE must-watch game each week for TV viewers in America, Monday Night Football has been in the doldrums for many years now. Not any more though.
ESPN spent massive dollars in early 2022 to entice Joe Buck and Troy Aikman to leave FOX and join MNF as its new announcing team.
There are three ways you can watch MNF in the UK - via Sky Sports, Channel 5 or NFL Game Pass.
Monday Night Football games normally kick off at 8.15pm on the East Coast of the United States. The UK is five hours ahead of Eastern Time, so you will need to set your alarm clocks for 1.15am most Tuesdays to watch the games live in the UK.
Here is the schedule as it stands:
Sunday Night Football is now THE marquee primetime slot for NFL on TV in the United States - and you can watch all the 2023 games on Sky Sports and NFL Game Pass in the UK.
SNF had a very different look in 2022 after some big changes in the broadcast booth. With Al Michaels departing for Thursday Night Football, Cris Collinsworth got a new play-by-play man in the shape of Mike Tirico.
Again, SNF has an early start for UK fans watching live, with games generally kicking off at 8.20pm Eastern, that’s 1.20am the following morning in the UK.
Another thing to remember about the SNF schedule is that not all the games are played on a Sunday. It gets the season opener on a Thursday each season plus a late game on Thanksgiving in November and a Saturday game during Wildcard playoff weekend.
The schedule also allows NBC in the United States to “flex” its SNF schedule, which means it can change games on the fly. It can change two games between Weeks 5 and 10, and then any game between Week 11 and 18.
So a lot of the schedule you see here, is subject to potential change:
Jeff Bezos is a very very rich man, so shelling out $11billion over 11 years for the exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football in the U.S. was a drop in the ocean for the Amazon owner.
The mind-boggling deal means Prime Video will have the games exclusively in the United States, and will produce them with their announcing team of Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit. And they will also show them in other countries too.
The UK sees two broadcasters have rights in 2023 - Amazon Prime Video and Sky Sports - as well as NFL Game Pass. Sky continues to share the rights despite Amazon having exclusivity in the U.S.
For so long seen as the poor relation in terms of the primetime games, TNF is likely to be handed more enticing matchups now after that huge Amazon deal. It also gets a ‘Black Friday’ game for the first time when the Dolphins face the Jets.
Thursday Night Football games kick off at 8.15pm Eastern Time in the United States. That is generally 1.15am on Fridays in the UK - alarm clocks needed yet again!
The 2023 schedule for Thursday Night Football looks like this:
NFL Game Pass is the NFL’s own official streaming product, and it offers a pretty nice service for subscribers.
The important thing to note from 2023 on is that streaming platform DAZN has the rights to sell and show Game Pass in the UK, so that’s where you will need to sign up and watch.
You can watch just about every game during the season. Plus preseason action and a ton of documentary and other programming on the NFL Network channel.
There are some games you can’t watch though - remember we mentioned earlier that Sky’s choice of 6pm and 9.25pm kickoffs on regular-season Sundays impacts Game Pass subscribers?
Those games are subject to what the NFL calls ‘blackout’ rules, and that means they cannot be watched on Game Pass in the UK, as they are exclusive to Sky Sports.
The other games Sky has (Monday Night, Sunday Night etc plus all the playoff games) are available on Game Pass.