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A season’s worth of prime-time NFL games will be shown on UK free-to-air television for the first time with Channel 5 picking up the rights to one of the league’s early Sunday kick-offs, sources with knowledge of the new multi-year deal have told The Athletic.
The American-owned broadcaster has a history of showing live NFL games overnight in the UK, including the Super Bowl, but from next month will also be able to offer regular-season games at 6pm (1pm ET, 10am PT) on its main channel, now known as 5, with another game on its Freeview channel 5Action in the later 9pm or 9.25pm window.
As well as these new viewing opportunities for UK- and Ireland-based NFL fans, the league’s long-term pay-TV partner in the region, Sky Sports, will continue to show two live games on its bespoke NFL channel on Sunday evenings, in the same 6pm/9pm slots, as well as the overnight games on Tuesday and Friday mornings.
The most avid British and Irish NFL fans will still be able to watch every game, apart from Sky’s two exclusive Sunday games, via DAZN’s Game Pass streaming offer — 5’s two Sunday games will not be blacked out. The popular Red Zone option, where multiple games are screened simultaneously, will remain available on both Sky and Game Pass with the Super Bowl shown by all three UK broadcast partners.
Full details of who has got what and when will be officially revealed by 5 and Sky Sports early next week but fundamentals of the split have been an open secret in the industry for weeks, with insiders noting the NFL’s desire to reach new fans via 5, while maintaining its lucrative relationships with Sky Sports and DAZN.
The latter has been the NFL’s direct-to-consumer partner since 2023, with Game Pass sales doubling over that period. The UK-based sports streamer, which recently attracted Saudi Arabian investment, will be offering more games in high definition as well as offering its “ultimate tier” subscribers the chance to watch up to four games at once on a single screen. Like last season, DAZN’s Game Pass will be available via Amazon, YouTube Premium and on connected devices.
At £15.99 ($21.48) a month, or £169.99 ($238) upfront, Game Pass is clearly a product for the sport’s most ardent followers, while the cheapest Sky Sports package starts at £22 and has always been marketed at committed fans. 5, on the other hand, costs nothing, which is why its decision to significantly increase its NFL coverage is the most interesting development for gridiron enthusiasts in the UK.
While it was Channel 4 that first broadcast NFL highlights on Sunday evenings in the early 1980s, Channel 5 showed NFL and other U.S. sports leagues from its very first night in operation in 1997. Over the next two decades, coverage of the NFL, Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League was a mainstay of the channel’s overnight schedules, attracting small, bleary-eyed but devoted followings.
After spells under British and German ownership, 5 was bought by Viacom in 2014, with the American giant then re-merging with CBS Corporation in 2019, rebranding as ViacomCBS, and then becoming Paramount Global in 2022, a sprawling company that included the Paramount film studio business, cable channels such as MTV and Nickelodeon, U.S. network CBS and channels, like 5, dotted around the globe.
But earlier this month, following two years of talks, Paramount merged with production and finance company Skydance Media to create Paramount Skydance Corporation, in a deal worth $8billion. Days later, the new behemoth spent $7.7billion to become the exclusive U.S. home of the Ultimate Fighting Championship for the next seven years.
King Charles III with Phoebe Schecter and Efe Obada at a charity event at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in February. (Eddie Mulholland – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
While 5’s NFL investment will be a tiny fraction of that deal, it is the latest example of the channel’s increased interest in sport. Earlier this summer, it announced it had picked up the rights to three leading snooker tournaments and it broadcast four England T20 cricket internationals, as well as 23 games from the FIFA Club World Cup.
Its NFL coverage on Sundays will be co-hosted by former The X Factor presenter Dermot O’Leary and Olympic-field-hockey-champion-turned-TV presenter Sam Quek, with British-Nigerian two-time Super Bowl winner Osi Umenyiora providing analysis.
The choice of O’Leary and Quek as co-hosts, however, indicates that 5 are hoping to attract a wider audience to the game than DAZN, Sky Sports or any of the NFL’s other UK broadcast partners have attempted to reach. As part of this effort, the channel is expected to experiment with a “gameshow” format during breaks in play.
The 2025 season starts on Thursday, September 4, when the reigning champion Philadelphia Eagles host the Dallas Cowboys, and culminates with Super Bowl LX on February 8, 2026, at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.
(Top photo: Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)