Netflix is set to broadcast the San Francisco 49ers vs. Los Angeles Rams Week 1 matchup in Australia, according to The Athletic. It’s the latest sign that the NFL’s broadcast landscape is shifting fast – and fans are going to need even more streaming subscriptions to keep up.
The backdrop here matters. ESPN lost the rights to four games as part of its acquisition of NFL Network, and those games are now being split between Netflix and YouTube, per CNBC via ProFootballTalk. The Week 1 international NFC West matchup between the Rams and 49ers was one of them.
For the 2026 season, Netflix will air four NFL games total.
Along with the Australia opener, Netflix is also airing two Christmas Day games – which fall on a Friday this year – and for the first time ever, it’s picking up a Thanksgiving Eve game, per John Ourand. That’s a pretty significant footprint for a platform that only started carrying NFL games recently.
The 2026 season will also feature nine international games – a record for the league. Matches are scheduled in Australia, Brazil, Mexico, France, Spain, Germany, and England. The full schedule is expected to drop next Wednesday or Thursday.
Fans in Australia will be able to catch the Rams-49ers game on local broadcast networks. Everyone else outside the market? They’ll need to dust off their Netflix subscription a few months earlier than planned.
The Bigger Picture for NFL Fans
One of the loudest complaints from fans right now is how many platforms they have to subscribe to just to watch their team play. That frustration isn’t going away anytime soon. As The Athletic reports, “The league is expected to have a slight increase in nationally broadcast games, with the addition of the Netflix game in Australia and other potential games moving to YouTube.”
The NFL continues to point out that 87 percent of its game inventory is still available through traditional broadcast outlets – though that number gets harder to lean on every time a marquee game moves behind a streaming paywall. Whether fans see Netflix’s growing role as a feature or a frustration probably depends on whether they’re already subscribers.