YouTube will stream an NFL game for free this fall

If you’re a fan of both

YouTube
and American football, then there’s some good news on the horizon: the National Football League has confirmed that YouTube will be the exclusive streamer of an early-season NFL game this September. The entire match will be available to watch live, with no premium or paid account subscription required to access the content when it touches down in the fall.

In particular, YouTube will be hosting the Friday night Week 1 game of the 2025 NFL season, which is set to take place on September 5 in São Paulo, Brazil. The game is taking place one day after the initial kickoff game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys.

“We are excited to expand our relationship with YouTube to bring this year’s Brazil game to a worldwide audience. YouTube and

YouTube TV
have been incredible partners of the NFL for several years and boast an immense global reach, and we look forward to Week 1 in São Paulo,” says Hans Schroeder, executive vice president of media distribution at the NFL.

Additionally, the NFL says it has entered into a multi-year deal for the annual Super Bowl Flag Football game, which features a showcase of creators and recording artists. This development arrives after a successful collaboration during Super Bowl LIX’s Flag Football Game, which the NFL says drew in over six million views on YouTube.

Over-the-top sports streaming hits the big league

Pocket-lint / Glenn Carstens-Peters / unsplash

American football remains a modern-day TV spectacle, with viewership numbers that handily surpass the majority of other sports broadcasts. As such, securing the exclusive online rights to even a single NFL game is a big deal, and an envious position to be in as an internet-based over-the-top streaming platform.

Earlier this year, free movie and film streamer

Tubi was the exclusive internet home of Super Bowl LIX
, which was also broadcast in the US via traditional terrestrial means through Tubi parent company Fox. Netflix, the 500-pound streaming gorilla in the room, hosted an NFL game livestream of its own back on Christmas Day last year.

It’s all but guaranteed that, come September 5, American football fans from around the country will be tuning in to watch the game for free through

YouTube
. Even if you have a traditional cable or satellite TV setup in place, the convenience and cost-efficiency of tuning in through an internet-based streamer is simply hard to ignore.

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