The NFL has been testing these waters for some time, strategically partnering with YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon to explore its streaming prospects. Last season, Goodell partnered with Mohan and several YouTubers, including iShowSpeed and MrBeast, on the platform’s first-ever football game. Netflix’s 2025 Christmas games averaged 23.7 million viewers domestically, slightly higher than the average viewership for a broadcast game. Amazon, however, is the only partner with an actual season buy-in via TNF.

For Goodell, that might be the most persuasive selling point. Over the past three years, fans have already come to expect, and even embrace, NFL games on Prime Video every Thursday, whereas YouTube’s and Netflix’s marketing teams have to work overtime to guide audiences to their one-off broadcasts. It’s not easy: YouTube reaches more than 2 billion users globally each month, and the NFL’s presence on the platform has continued to grow as the league invests more in its channel. Netflix maintains the second-largest share of all streaming TV time in the U.S., with just under 8.5 percent of time spent. But five years of sports streaming data suggest that while fans will definitely switch platforms for sufficiently big events, casual viewers are harder to capture. Would the Super Bowl be any different?

To make his case, Marine will also have to persuade Goodell that Amazon is the best partner for reaching both domestic and international audiences, which might pose a challenge. Amazon does partner with plenty of international leagues and tournaments—the Premier League in the U.K., the NHL in Canada, and Roland Garros in France—which allows it to drive new subscribers and advertising opportunities. But Netflix, with the largest premium streaming video audience, and YouTube, the largest video platform, could deliver more viewers on both the international and domestic fronts. YouTube can also make the game available to everyone at no additional cost, which could help keep Trump’s regulators at bay.

Indeed, the Trump administration may be the biggest complexifier of all. As everyone reading this knows, earlier this month, ahead of the NFL’s upcoming rights negotiations, the D.O.J. opened an antitrust investigation into whether the league’s practice of selling media rights across streaming, cable, and broadcast is driving up costs for consumers. At the same time, Carr has openly floated the idea that broadcasters—who don’t have the deep pockets of the tech behemoths—should form a collective to negotiate with sports leagues.

This past weekend, Carr brought up Marine’s recent comments about the Super Bowl on X, asking his 192,000 followers what they thought about the game moving from “free broadcast” to Amazon. Carr has previously suggested that fans are spending more money than ever to watch their favorite teams—north of $1,600 a season, per some calculations, although my own research suggests that’s a reach. Regardless, it’s true that removing sports from local broadcasters could affect news viewership, since sports (especially the NFL) are a strong lead-in for programming like 60 Minutes on Sundays—a genuine point of concern that Carr believes could warrant federal intervention.

However, there are a few ways Marine could potentially placate Carr—and one might involve a partnership with NBC Sports. After all, NBC has worked with Amazon on Thursday Night Football, and for an event the size of the Super Bowl, Amazon may be willing to partner with a battle-tested broadcast partner. The math gets tricky in this hypothetical: If the game is available on NBC (but not Peacock), that could divert a significant portion of the Super Bowl audience to Roberts’s network or even a virtual cable distributor like YouTube TV. In that scenario, it’s hard to see the upside for Marine given the potential price tag.

There are plenty of holes in Carr’s arguments, to be sure. The vast majority of games are still available on free-to-air channels, and most households already have a service like Netflix or regularly use YouTube. But if Marine and Jassy really want the Super Bowl, it’s a circle they’ll have to square—even if these conversations get punted into the next decade.