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YouTube’s Friday Night Lights

Yes, YouTube is streaming its first NFL game tomorrow from Brazil, and yes the NFL seems to be conceding to the long-inevitable march toward streaming—even embracing YouTubers like Dude Perfect. But don’t let that fool you. The NFL is still about the TV business, and business is still good.

Patrick Mahomes
Sources are more interested in everything happening around the Chiefs-Chargers game than the game itself, to the point that YouTube’s game production feels almost like an afterthought. Photo: Michael Owens/Getty Images
John Ourand
September 4, 2025

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In many respects, there’s nothing special about tomorrow night’s live YouTube broadcast of the Chiefs-Chargers game from Brazil. After all, the league has been streaming games for the better part of a decade—Yahoo carried a Bills-Jaguars game from London back in 2015, with a Sunday morning feed memorably defined by choppy, pixelated video. In the ensuing decade, of course, technology has vastly improved, and other than the rogue Mike Tyson–Jake Paul fight on Netflix, streaming customers have not generally had to deal with lag. Audiences have managed to find the streams, too: Amazon’s Thursday Night Football audience is comparable to any game that’s available exclusively on cable.